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Kalmageddon
2013-10-10, 10:00 AM
I think it's a well known fact that discussing real life issues in relation to roleplaying games is a sure way to get your thread locked on this forum, which is understandable because said discussions tend to become very heated very fast.
The reason seems to be that there is a whole lot of people that can make pretty heavy accusations and judge the morals and beliefs of someone based almost exlusively on how they handle roleplaying.

Which I think raises an interesting point: how much can you really tell about a person and his moral values from the way they roleplay, either as a player or as a GM?

My personal opinion is that you can't really tell all that much. Roleplaying implies playing a role which more often then not tends to be something very different from what you are in real life. Not only that, but your preferences about what kind of situations you would like to roleplay isn't necessarely representative of how you'd like to live your life. You may like action oriented adventures, but it doesn't mean that you'd like to kill someone in real life. You may like to roleplay scumbags, but it doesn't mean you are one in real life.
Even as a GM the way you shape the world isn't representative of your values. I personally like dystopian settings a la Warhammer 40k, but I don't support the typical political and moral beliefs that are going to be common in those settings.

And yet it seems that according to some people, roleplaying should always accomodate the real life ideologies of everyone involved. Basically, it seems that if there is sexism in the setting, then it's your right to be offended by it even if it's not real sexism, being that it's not directed at a real person and it's not meant to convey a pro-sexist message, and call out your GM on that.
Or, if a player wants to roleplay a sexist character then he must be sexist as well, and if his character makes a sexist comment about my female character then I have every right to call him out on that.
(I'm only using sexism as an exemple, it could be anything, from racism to homophobia, etc...)
What confuses me even further is that no one ever calls the GM or a player a pro-murderer just because there is plenty of killing in the typical roleplaying game, even if arguably killing a fellow human being is the most horribile act you can possibly do, since it's the ultimate form of violation, taking away the possibility of living.

But at last this seems the mentality of at least some people I've seen around here.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have comfort zones when it comes to roleplaying. Everyone has preferences and it's obvious that one shouldn't be forced to roleplay a situation he or she isn't comfortable with, this isn't a discussion to talk about uncomfortable situations in games. What I'm talking about is passing judgment on a real person based on what happens in a roleplaying game.
This seems to be most frequent towards GMs, but I've seen players being victim of this too.

I'd like to hear your opinion on the matter.

NichG
2013-10-10, 10:16 AM
Well I think any social interaction with a person can provide information to their real self, even if the interaction is them pretending to be a fictional character.

But I think people vastly oversimplify the process of obtaining that information. The better the roleplayer, the harder it will be to tell if they're playing something because of their own issues or because they're able to separate themselves from their character just that cleanly. So if you really want to psychoanalyze someone from their roleplay its never going to be as clear-cut as 'if they play a character who is sexist then they're sexist'. It would be more like, over many campaigns, do they always play a sexist character?

Even then, there could be many reasons - are they doing it because they are enjoying the escapism of being sexist in a fictional world where that's okay, are they doing it in order to lambast or satirize it, etc. Its possible to pick apart these reasons if you play with someone for a long time, but not with a simple generalization.

Also, just because you can analyze a person doesn't mean its a good idea to do so. No one is 'perfect' and no one will have exactly the same worldview. If you're personally bothered by other people holding certain views, its better not to know everything about the people around you so you can actually function in a social group. In the average group of 6 people, at least one person is going to hold at least one view that seems wrongheaded, crazy, or even offensive to someone else in the group, be it a casual '-ism' that they grew up with, a political or religious view, etc.

lytokk
2013-10-10, 10:28 AM
I think if someone consistently plays the same character throughout every game its not always a 100% indication of who they are as a person. Sometimes it could be, other times, they know they can play that personality, and have received praise for their good role playing ability. Maybe praise is the wrong word, attention maybe? At least in the case of a bigoted character. Its what they're comfortable playing because they can think in that mindset. It doesn't mean they are in that mindset, but they can think it. Its also something that gives their character a twist, and its a twist they can handle.

Another example, the nerdy type with the shy personality. We've all me a person like this, heck some of us may be this person. But when they sit down to play, shyness all gone and they become one of the best role players at the table. He's just now playing someone with a strong personality, in spite of his (in general) weaker personality.

SethoMarkus
2013-10-10, 10:40 AM
I agree with NichG.

While it is possible to psychoanalyze a player over the course of multiple interactions, it is not a simple or clean process. There are many reasons to act or roleplay certain characters, regardless of the actual player's personality and beliefs. This is further complicated by varying degrees of roleplaying ability on the part of the player.

Largely, I would say that through roleplaying alone it is too difficult to accurately measure the morals and beliefs of a player. However, in a face-to-face setting, in a social situation such as a roleplaying game, I think it is a great environment and opportunity to see some of the inner, normally hidden traits of your fellow players. Watching the out-of-character reactions and comments will give much more information than the player's roleplaying can tell.

Segev
2013-10-10, 11:09 AM
Honestly, I think a lot of the armchair psychologists on the internet tend to judge people not on "wanting to play a sexist," but on whether they like settings that are hip to whatever social causes the armchair psychologists believe to be important. It's why we get people being offended when a situation is handled as anything other than the glowing paragon of virtue or the disgusting horrible evil that they believe it would be in the real world.

We tend, I think, to see more people accusing others of bigotry (and especially "soft" bigotry through whatever method the armchair psychologist has invented to "prove" that not doing it exactly how they want it done is actually unacknowledged bigotry) when said people's portrayal of something in a game doesn't match how those armchair psychologists believe it should be portrayed.

Have "usually evil" races? Obviously closet racism designed to pastiche real human skin colors and cultures, because the armchair psychologist says so. You have to do it THEIR way - whether that be "all races can be all things, and you can't make any educated guesses until you investigate the situation thoroughly each time" or "your good race had better recognize women as equal to men in all ways" or "your evil race can't have homosexuality as part of its culture because that's saying homosexuality is evil!" or even "your good race had better NOT treat women as identical to men, because no good race would put women on the front lines in a war!" - or YOU are a BAD PERSON because obviously not depicting it the way they would means you're supporting social injustice, or (on the other side, though that seems a lot rarer on the internet in RPG forums, in my experience) you're undermining the moral fabric of society by depicting good as bad and bad as good.

I do get very tired of social crusading. I don't like seeing it hidden in my games, settings, and fiction, but I'll generally accept it as long as my own takes and spins on things are respected. I REALLY don't like seeing it used to attack settings I like on the basis that not only is that setting and its writers promoting "soft bigotry" and "hate," but that anybody who likes it is either too stupid to see it or is a bad person, themselves (or, more likely, both) for not hating it just like the social crusaders do.

Ultimately, I think it is social crusading that causes these vitriolic problems. Your depiction of a fictional situation doesn't paint it in the good or bad light that somebody else feels the situation would represent in real life. Because of this, you are revealing that you are a bigot. After all, only a bigot would think good could come of [social injustice of choice]. And even denying that there is social injustice is proof that you're a bigot.

It's intollerance of perceived intollerance, and a will, nay, a delight in denying the legitimacy of anybody having views different from one's own. You have to like and accept everything they've deemed acceptable and laudible, or you are a bad person. You aren't just disagreeing with them, but actively - by not joining in their hatred of the object of ridicule - oppressing whoever they're crusading for. Often, themselves, in some way. And it can't ever be the reverse; they can't be oppressing you, because you're a bad person and bad people are the oppressors. Your opinion is evil and must be expunged. You can't be allowed to continue minding your own business because that's "soft" bigotry. All things - all role playing, all fiction - must reflect the social justice view of the speaker, because anything that doesn't is active oppression.



I guess what I'm saying is: if you don't like something in fiction, don't hate the people who do like it. Not everything is a social justice cause, and not everything you disagree with is reflective of psychological problems in those who believe it.

But we wind up with these arguments that become personal because fiction is rooted, one way or another, in our beliefs about the real world. So when we see fiction, say, that depicts Communist Russia as a utopia and the USA in the mid-1900s as a barren wasteland filled with greed and hate, those of us who feel that America had some awesome years in that period and that Communism is in fact a source of great evil when put into practice might be a bit offended. But at the same time, those who feel that America WAS (and maybe still is) a wasteland of greed and hate might feel anybody who decries that fiction as flawed is actually a bad person who is trying to justify greed and corruption.

Fiction is, too often, propaganda, and there are people who think that any fiction that isn't actively propagandizing for their social cause of choice is actively oppressing it.

The Fury
2013-10-10, 11:34 AM
Without getting into a long and complicated answer, there's definitely a case that can be made for it. After all, people get judged for the kinds of music that they like and one would think that what someone says at an actual table in front of actual people might say more about them than whether or not they like Iron Maiden.
Yeah, there's definitely problems with evaluating someone's personality based on how they roleplay though. Like taste in music, it's an indicator of personality but an unreliable one.

Kalmageddon
2013-10-10, 01:10 PM
Honestly, I think a lot of the armchair psychologists on the internet tend to judge people not on "wanting to play a sexist," but on whether they like settings that are hip to whatever social causes the armchair psychologists believe to be important. It's why we get people being offended when a situation is handled as anything other than the glowing paragon of virtue or the disgusting horrible evil that they believe it would be in the real world.

We tend, I think, to see more people accusing others of bigotry (and especially "soft" bigotry through whatever method the armchair psychologist has invented to "prove" that not doing it exactly how they want it done is actually unacknowledged bigotry) when said people's portrayal of something in a game doesn't match how those armchair psychologists believe it should be portrayed.

Have "usually evil" races? Obviously closet racism designed to pastiche real human skin colors and cultures, because the armchair psychologist says so. You have to do it THEIR way - whether that be "all races can be all things, and you can't make any educated guesses until you investigate the situation thoroughly each time" or "your good race had better recognize women as equal to men in all ways" or "your evil race can't have homosexuality as part of its culture because that's saying homosexuality is evil!" or even "your good race had better NOT treat women as identical to men, because no good race would put women on the front lines in a war!" - or YOU are a BAD PERSON because obviously not depicting it the way they would means you're supporting social injustice, or (on the other side, though that seems a lot rarer on the internet in RPG forums, in my experience) you're undermining the moral fabric of society by depicting good as bad and bad as good.

I do get very tired of social crusading. I don't like seeing it hidden in my games, settings, and fiction, but I'll generally accept it as long as my own takes and spins on things are respected. I REALLY don't like seeing it used to attack settings I like on the basis that not only is that setting and its writers promoting "soft bigotry" and "hate," but that anybody who likes it is either too stupid to see it or is a bad person, themselves (or, more likely, both) for not hating it just like the social crusaders do.

Ultimately, I think it is social crusading that causes these vitriolic problems. Your depiction of a fictional situation doesn't paint it in the good or bad light that somebody else feels the situation would represent in real life. Because of this, you are revealing that you are a bigot. After all, only a bigot would think good could come of [social injustice of choice]. And even denying that there is social injustice is proof that you're a bigot.

It's intollerance of perceived intollerance, and a will, nay, a delight in denying the legitimacy of anybody having views different from one's own. You have to like and accept everything they've deemed acceptable and laudible, or you are a bad person. You aren't just disagreeing with them, but actively - by not joining in their hatred of the object of ridicule - oppressing whoever they're crusading for. Often, themselves, in some way. And it can't ever be the reverse; they can't be oppressing you, because you're a bad person and bad people are the oppressors. Your opinion is evil and must be expunged. You can't be allowed to continue minding your own business because that's "soft" bigotry. All things - all role playing, all fiction - must reflect the social justice view of the speaker, because anything that doesn't is active oppression.



I guess what I'm saying is: if you don't like something in fiction, don't hate the people who do like it. Not everything is a social justice cause, and not everything you disagree with is reflective of psychological problems in those who believe it.

But we wind up with these arguments that become personal because fiction is rooted, one way or another, in our beliefs about the real world. So when we see fiction, say, that depicts Communist Russia as a utopia and the USA in the mid-1900s as a barren wasteland filled with greed and hate, those of us who feel that America had some awesome years in that period and that Communism is in fact a source of great evil when put into practice might be a bit offended. But at the same time, those who feel that America WAS (and maybe still is) a wasteland of greed and hate might feel anybody who decries that fiction as flawed is actually a bad person who is trying to justify greed and corruption.

Fiction is, too often, propaganda, and there are people who think that any fiction that isn't actively propagandizing for their social cause of choice is actively oppressing it.

Well said, I agree completely.

Sith_Happens
2013-10-10, 01:16 PM
I'm going to say "fallacy," based on the fact that I once played a character who was a greedy, distrustful [anus], despite my not being one in real life.

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 01:19 PM
How about when "how they role-play" squicks-out everyone else at the table?

Does it happen? and what do people tend to conclude when it happens a lot?

Kalmageddon
2013-10-10, 01:27 PM
How about when "how they role-play" squicks-out everyone else at the table?

Does it happen? and what do people tend to conclude when it happens a lot?

If the squeaking out was brought up to said player before and was properly discussed then you could possibly conclude that either this person has difficulties understanding the root of the problem you have with him, or that he doesn't care enough, or that he finds you overly sensitive because, well, maybe you are in relation to most people he knows.

None of these elements really tell all that much about him as a person except maybe picturing him as a bit self centered in that context.
More often then not the problem is lack of communication, because it's much easier to just be offended and either lashing out in a non constructive fashon or talk behind someone's back instead of trying to explain things without making accusations.

When there is a problem at the gaming table what matters is solving it, not determining whose fault it is. Much less judging the entirety of a person based on that context.

Joe the Rat
2013-10-10, 01:30 PM
There's three things we need to keep separated here: What we play, Why we play, and How we play. The What piece in and of itself is probably the least informative, as it is most influenced by group consensus or GM dictation. And beyond that, it's about preferences for story types.

Why we play - our overt and unconscious motivations - says more about us. This is not always as evident. Are we playing to be our ideal selves - characters who are what we would be if society... or biology... or physics would stop getting in the way? Are we building an ideal world, or one that we have to fight to make 'right'? Maybe we're playing our true selves - what we would do if consequences weren't so permanent - our naked greed, wrath, and other deadlies exposed. Or are we playing to try on a different skin for a while? To see what it would be like to be something different... to stretch our acting chops. Are you in for full-on wish fulfillment? Or maybe we play something because it delivers pseudovisceral or mechanical elements we enjoy. We like rolling dice, we like picking up the pieces and collecting them like a death tally, we like the opportunity to turn our brains off and hack at things. We like a design challenge, or a challenge in design. We like mysteries, and want to puzzle them out...

How... not "are we including objective vs. subjective morality," not "my character is a bullying thug," but what you are doing at the table. Are you stepping on other player's toes, or trying to grandstand every scene? Are you deliberately trying to sabotage the other players - or the GM, and is that the goal of the game? Are you trying to push everyone through the narrative? Are you stepping back and letting everyone do their thing? Are you fastidiously tracking everything, or forgetting to write stuff down? Are you cheating? You could be the brawniest barbarian or the spooniest bard, and be a bully to the other players. Do you spend more time playing or complaining?

How says more than Why says more than What. And even then, it's pretty situational. You could be as easily letting the real you out as you could be trying out a character. You're looking for consistent patterns - probably enough so that you could piece it together based on everything else you know about someone as the game itself.

The Oni
2013-10-10, 01:58 PM
A lot of times, the characters people play in RPGs are the characters they wish they could be IRL. Other times they aren't.

I'll tell you what I've played; tell me what I am.

I've played:

(PF) A LG anti-slavery white-haired witch/monk with 20 INT, no social graces and an obsession with chivalry. His day job is that he has his crab familiar cut people's hair with her claws and acts as her manager. He and his neighbors were kicked around their entire lives as serfs, so he tries to act super manly but often fails (low Cha/Wis). I play him with a French accent.

(PF) A TN giant-armed Barbarian (Mad Dog) tiefling. He's missing one of his arms, because his past revolves around being captured as a young boy (a man by the Tribe's standards though) by paladins. The paladins tried to "re-educate" him in hopes that he would becomes a productive member of society, but that got ****ed up when a rogue Inquisitor of the order burned his arm off with holy fire (that was the "source of his evil" apparently) and he replaced it with a Flying Blade attached to his arm by a chain. Needless to say he's not big on religion. Smarter than he lets on. Shares a kinship with his dire bat companion.

(D&D 3.5, using the Rokugani Adventures books) A very pretty CN carp hengeyokai swashbuckler who used war fans. Part of his combat strategy was that people would mistake him for an unarmed woman before he drew the weapons and with a successful Bluff check, he'd get bonuses to attack them by surprise. He was actually on a mission from the Dragon Goddess to go find the Celestial Brush he failed to protect because he was busy screwing a local daimyo's daughter. Part of the joke was he was going to use his Hengeyokai powers to prestige into Warshaper and acquire breath weapons - thus evolving into Gyrados.

(PF) An CG half-orc Fighter who had been born into an evil Human work camp but escaped. He had high Charisma because everyone just somehow *liked* him inexplicably, he seemed to have this aura of optimism but he couldn't talk very well, could barely read at all, and used starknives as his weapon of choice.

D&D An CG Elven bard who thought he was Indiana Jones. His performance was Oratory and he was moderately famous. He used a whip, but it turned out he was terrible with it. His greatest achievement was convincing a master thief to surrender rather than be killed (the rest of the party wanted to kill her) by using Ventriloquism to impersonate the entire Night's Watch of the town over, and surround the building she was in.

ClockShock
2013-10-10, 02:28 PM
I'm going to say "fallacy," based on the fact that I once played a character who was a greedy, distrustful [anus], despite my not being one in real life.

I'll also say fallacy, but for the opposite reason.

valadil
2013-10-10, 03:03 PM
There are a number of reasons why someone may roleplay a character a certain way. They're not worth enumerating. Some players play character similar to them, others go for characters who are different. Some act on a whim doing whatever seems fun at the time, while others only take actions that represent their character's inner core. Some are just bad at roleplaying. Or they got bored and wanted to see a fight happen instead of more haggling with that damned innkeeper.

Anyway what I'm getting at is that you can't just judge the actions, you also need the motivation. And I wouldn't be surprised if the motivation is more telling than the action. "I want to annoy the GM," tells me more about someone than "I burn down the imaginary orphanage."

I'm not going to pick fallacy or legit. I think there's probably something to be gleaned from roleplaying and it's probably comprable to what can be gleaned from other social activities. I'm sure I've judged people based on the movies sitting on their shelf, but I have no idea if I've gotten any useful information from doing so.

Fiery Diamond
2013-10-10, 03:04 PM
A lot of times, the characters people play in RPGs are the characters they wish they could be IRL. Other times they aren't.

I'll tell you what I've played; tell me what I am.

I've played:

(PF) A LG anti-slavery white-haired witch/monk with 20 INT, no social graces and an obsession with chivalry. His day job is that he has his crab familiar cut people's hair with her claws and acts as her manager. He and his neighbors were kicked around their entire lives as serfs, so he tries to act super manly but often fails (low Cha/Wis). I play him with a French accent.

(PF) A TN giant-armed Barbarian (Mad Dog) tiefling. He's missing one of his arms, because his past revolves around being captured as a young boy (a man by the Tribe's standards though) by paladins. The paladins tried to "re-educate" him in hopes that he would becomes a productive member of society, but that got ****ed up when a rogue Inquisitor of the order burned his arm off with holy fire (that was the "source of his evil" apparently) and he replaced it with a Flying Blade attached to his arm by a chain. Needless to say he's not big on religion. Smarter than he lets on. Shares a kinship with his dire bat companion.

(D&D 3.5, using the Rokugani Adventures books) A very pretty CN carp hengeyokai swashbuckler who used war fans. Part of his combat strategy was that people would mistake him for an unarmed woman before he drew the weapons and with a successful Bluff check, he'd get bonuses to attack them by surprise. He was actually on a mission from the Dragon Goddess to go find the Celestial Brush he failed to protect because he was busy screwing a local daimyo's daughter. Part of the joke was he was going to use his Hengeyokai powers to prestige into Warshaper and acquire breath weapons - thus evolving into Gyrados.

(PF) An CG half-orc Fighter who had been born into an evil Human work camp but escaped. He had high Charisma because everyone just somehow *liked* him inexplicably, he seemed to have this aura of optimism but he couldn't talk very well, could barely read at all, and used starknives as his weapon of choice.

D&D An CG Elven bard who thought he was Indiana Jones. His performance was Oratory and he was moderately famous. He used a whip, but it turned out he was terrible with it. His greatest achievement was convincing a master thief to surrender rather than be killed (the rest of the party wanted to kill her) by using Ventriloquism to impersonate the entire Night's Watch of the town over, and surround the building she was in.

From this I would conclude that you are probably good at role-playing and at least a generally decent, perhaps actively good, person.

I could be wrong, however. I only have this post to go on.

I agree with Joe the Rat and Segev quite a bit on what they had to say.

veti
2013-10-10, 04:12 PM
We tend, I think, to see more people accusing others of bigotry (and especially "soft" bigotry through whatever method the armchair psychologist has invented to "prove" that not doing it exactly how they want it done is actually unacknowledged bigotry) when said people's portrayal of something in a game doesn't match how those armchair psychologists believe it should be portrayed.

I don't disagree, but it's worth remembering "the Internet effect" on that perception.

I don't know how old you are, but I remember when I was about 14 or 15, having a long and traumatic argument (drawn out over several weeks) about Subject E, which left me - after much soul-searching - a convinced supporter of E. And in that mindframe, I learned to see (the thing that E is against) all around me, in all contexts, and I "learned" that it was my solemn duty to oppose it at every opportunity.

A lot of people go through phases like that. It's really tiresome for everyone around them, and that's part of the reason why teenagers tend to hang out with other teens - it's much easier to tolerate that kind of thing if you're going through it yourself at the same time.

As I matured, while I still believed in E, I came to see it as just one of many things worth getting upset about. There are also subjects A-D, and F through about V, some of which are at least as important as E. I came to see that most people have good causes of various sorts, that they attach different priorities to them, and I shouldn't judge them for failing to see (or remark on) 'E' in a given context. And therefore, I'm much, much slower to weigh in on Subject E than when I was 15.

But the thing is: on the Internet, there are always some people who are 15. (Or equivalent, different people reach this stage at different ages, some people "get" a new cause for the first time in their 30s or 40s.) And there's no way of telling who they are. What you can pretty much guarantee, however, is that they'll be the loudest, most noticeable posters whenever their personal Subject E comes up. And they'll be able to perceive 'E' in contexts where it would never have occurred to someone who didn't share their obsession.

And therefore, in discussions on the Internet, this whole attitude appears to be much stronger/more prevalent than it really is. There may be 80% of people who aren't interested in judging you at all, 15% who think about the issue but don't see the need to speak up because they know you're a complex person with more things than that on your mind and they're not privy to all the information - and 2% who see the issue and can't stop themselves from attacking it. Who, in turn, will usually attract the other 3% who see the attacks, and can't resist weighing in against them (thereby, incidentally, reinforcing the 2% in their belief that they're the only, lone crusaders who really understand, and the world needs their message). And that 5% of posters are the ones who'll make 90% of the noise.

Urpriest
2013-10-10, 04:19 PM
I don't think it's ever as simple as "you roleplay/write a world containing X, therefore you think X is ok!"

But I think that the type of fiction a person enjoys (which influences the worlds they write, and the characters they play) does say something about who they are, or more properly, what they know. Basically, a poor treatment of a sensitive subject indicates that someone either doesn't understand that their treatment is poor, or doesn't understand that the subject is sensitive. Those are both potentially important points of information. Similarly, someone playing a cliche by itself doesn't tell you anything...but if they play a cliche, and clearly don't recognize that they are playing a cliche, then that tells you a great deal.

The language of fiction that the person is comfortable with is also relevant. One person on this forum apparently had a DM who had their wyrmling gold dragon character raped by Ogres for not behaving lawfully enough, despite having previously allowed the character to be chaotic good. The use of rape itself is not the problem, the problem is in the fact that the DM and player (and hopefully most of us) have very different views on what constitutes good use of rape in fiction.

The Oni
2013-10-10, 04:31 PM
I don't think it's ever as simple as "you roleplay/write a world containing X, therefore you think X is ok!"

The problem is that some people DO think that way. In the same way that people decried Battle Royale or The Hunger Games as supporting the murder of children, or thought 1984 was an instruction manual for good governance, or supposed Jonathan Swift was fond of the sweet taste of Irish babies.

Obviously a world will have [Bad Stuff X] in it, because if it's written exactly the way the writer thinks the world should be, it'll be a helluva boring campaign.

Delwugor
2013-10-10, 04:44 PM
Role Playing in a game is not the same as Real Life.
Real Life People are not the characters they role play in a game.
You judge characters by how they are role played in a game.
You judge people by their words and actions in real life.

In other words, no.

If the question came about from the thread going on about the NPC then to me it was obvious that the accusations of sexism where completely unsubstantiated. But once the accusation was made, people starting jumping on the EVIL GM Bandwagon, and the thread went downhill fast.

I have seen this type of accusation bandwagon before on GitP, and personally I wish the moderators here would remind people that unsubstantiated accusations do not belong in a friendly forum like GitP.

jedipotter
2013-10-10, 05:11 PM
Which I think raises an interesting point: how much can you really tell about a person and his moral values from the way they roleplay, either as a player or as a GM?

My personal opinion is that you can't really tell all that much.

It can tell you tons about a person. But, then everything does.

To put it simply and bluntly, there is a huge difference between believing something and just faking it. And most people can't fake it.

And a great many people can't role play things they don't like or don't agree with. They won't even want to pretend that what ever they really think in Real Life is wrong. Few people can stray too far from who they are, even if it is just for an imaginary character.

Only a handful of gamers can role play anything. The rest are stuck just being slight variations of themselves.

Lorsa
2013-10-10, 05:14 PM
I think how you roleplay can tell things about you, but who you roleplay and what actions your character takes less so.

With how I mean how you interact with the other players at the table.

Themrys
2013-10-10, 05:52 PM
Well I think any social interaction with a person can provide information to their real self, even if the interaction is them pretending to be a fictional character.

This.

And if someone is not interested in whether other players have fun, too, this says a whole lot about that person.

If a man plays a sexist male character, he's Schroedinger's sexist, so to speak.
When I tell him that I don't feel comfortable with sexism in the game and would prefer him to play a non-sexist character, and he then insists that my fun is irrelevant, then he has proven himself to be a terrible person and very likely sexist, too, although that doesn't matter, since I don't want to roleplay with him anyway.
If, on the other hand, he calmly explains that he thinks prejudiced characters are a good opportunity for roleplaying conflict, and agrees to play a misandrist amazon instead, or a character who hates elves, or whatever all players at the table feel comfortable with, he has proven himself to be okay and not a sexist.


And that goes for all roles one can play. In larp, I have been lucky enough to have never encountered the "mysterious" assassin who murders ordinary people on their way to the loo, for no other reason than the fact that the player wants to be a mysterious assassin.
I am perfectly happy with that, and, as a matter of fact, would judge the player of said assassin. Negatively. It is well known that almost no one wants their player character murdered, which is why no one in their right mind would play an assassin who actually murders player characters.

It is usually quite easy to tell whether someone plays an unlikable character because they really are like that, or whether they do it because they think it's fun for everyone.
That's because someone who wants everyone to have fun will not look for an easy victim to murder/spew their hate to, but for someone who has fun talking to, or otherwise interacting with their unlikable character.

With GMs, it can be a bit trickier, but complaining will make everything clear in that case, too.
If they don't think that everyone should have fun, they are terrible people.

Kalmageddon
2013-10-10, 05:57 PM
If, on the other hand, he calmly explains that he thinks prejudiced characters are a good opportunity for roleplaying conflict, and agrees to play a misandrist amazon instead, or a character who hates elves, or whatever all players at the table feel comfortable with, he has proven himself to be okay and not a sexist.


Wait, what?:smallconfused:

hamishspence
2013-10-10, 06:02 PM
The point being made was that all the player wants to play, is someone prejudiced- for the roleplaying challenge- they don't care what the prejudice is- and they're willing to change it if the other players are made uncomfortable by it.

Morithias
2013-10-10, 06:20 PM
I would say it depends on the person far too much.

Often times my roleplaying is based on something from a video-game or movie I saw. Other times it actually IS based on my own political beliefs.

There are basically two consistencies in my characters.

1. The character is almost always female.

and

2. The character is attracted to management positions.

These two reasons are rather simple.

1. I am a male to female transsexual, and therefore playing a female character allows me to escape my body.

and

2. I enjoy simulation games. I played Simcity when I was a kid and it stuck.

Other than that anything goes. I've played the pragmatic tyrant who played the world for fools while debating "What is evil". I've played the innocent merchant who was the last heir to an ancient empire representing Catherage while the other PC was a warrior butler who represented Rome. I've played Vow of Peace healers, and Amazon Battle Maidens, murderous Deathstalkers, and hardworking merchants.

All in all there is probably only things you can truly tell about me, is that I find the mundane fascinating and play female characters.

But by all means, please try to judge me, I want to see what other secrets I've given out in this post.

The Oni
2013-10-10, 06:22 PM
See, I don't think that's necessarily a fair assessment. Is a misandrist Amazon less offensive than a misogynistic anything-else? Not really. Perhaps more acceptable because it's an established cliche and has been played for laughs far more often than taken seriously.

Prejudiced characters can be great. For example, the characters I mentioned earlier. My LG witch/monk is a chauvinist. He doesn't hate women, by any means; on the contrary, he's very much a White Knight. The way it manifests is that he sometimes does stupid and reckless things to protect women even when those women have proven themselves more competent in combat than he is. Yes, it makes him a flawed character, yes, it gets him in trouble - and that's why I play him that way.

Kalmageddon
2013-10-10, 06:23 PM
The point being made was that all the player wants to play, is someone prejudiced- for the roleplaying challenge- they don't care what the prejudice is- and they're willing to change it if the other players are made uncomfortable by it.

See, this is a bit of fallacy right here.
One could have preferences towards what his character should be predjudiced. I roleplayed an old warrior once, he was fat, drunk and pretty much thought that all women were tavern wenches ready to sit on his lap to hear about his greatest victories. He was extremly sexist towards women and it was fun to roleplay him that way because, obviously, most women wouldn't play along and he had to come up with some kind of excuse to cover up his falure in seducing them ("she must be married" "I must have killed her father in one of those glorious battles!" "well she wasn't my type anyway!").
Roleplaying a misandric amazon would be roleplaying a completly different character and thus I would not agree to do that instead.
Sometimes it's fun to roleplay a character in relation to a specific kind of group, like women in the case of the previously mentioned character.

And this is where the fallacy comes into play, because sice I refused to change my character according to Themrys I'm now a bad person, sexist and so on... Except that I'm not, because it simply shouldn't be necessary.
What I mean is that if you have such huge problems with some aspects of life then it should be said straight away, explained to everyone in the gaming group and then discussed before starting the campaign so that you never have to deal with it.
If you get to the point where you are roleplaying alongside someone that somehow offends you with his character or setting then it is you who did something wrong, namely thinking that everyone will share your point of view by default and have the same issues you have.
As I said before, communication is essential.
If you have to confront someone about something beyond that point, there is no right or wrong, it's simply a matter of who's kindest. The person roleplaying the awkward character might be kind and mature enought to say "ok, I'll change character/tone it down", or you might be kind and mature enough to say "look, I know you don't mean any of this stuff in real life, so go ahead, I'll just deal with it".
This need to point fingers and call someone a bad person, I really don't understand.

Now it would be interesting to see if Themrys would still find me sexist for roleplaying a character like the one I described above even if no one in my gaming group, which included two girls by the way, was offended in any way.

AgentofHellfire
2013-10-10, 06:25 PM
If a man plays a sexist male character, he's Schroedinger's sexist, so to speak.

...this, I have to say, is stretching it really thin.

Given especially that in order for a character played to be prejudiced, one generally has to acknowledge that the flaw in their thinking exists, which of course a truly prejudiced individual wouldn't consider a flaw. They wouldn't call their own avatar "sexist". (Or racist, or whatever)



When I tell him that I don't feel comfortable with sexism in the game and would prefer him to play a non-sexist character, and he then insists that my fun is irrelevant, then he has proven himself to be a terrible person and very likely sexist, too, although that doesn't matter, since I don't want to roleplay with him anyway.
If, on the other hand, he calmly explains that he thinks prejudiced characters are a good opportunity for roleplaying conflict, and agrees to play a misandrist amazon instead, or a character who hates elves, or whatever all players at the table feel comfortable with, he has proven himself to be okay and not a sexist.

What about the third option?

What if the player in question says that he/she wouldn't demand that your character, who has several traits he finds uncomfortable, be shifted for the sake of his comfort--since, of course, you're allowed to have some fun--and that his fun shouldn't be infringed upon either? Especially since he already made the character and played a few games with him.

(From my own view personally, if I hadn't actually started to play the game with the character I'd definitely shift, but...)

Metahuman1
2013-10-10, 06:29 PM
It might show you something about them. Or maybe that they just happen to enjoy a certain style of game play.


I like to play melee heavy good guys a lot of the time cause it's a fun archetype for me. Doesn't mean in real life I like to run around giving out vigilant justice.

The Oni
2013-10-10, 06:34 PM
Other than that anything goes. I've played the pragmatic tyrant who played the world for fools while debating "What is evil". I've played the innocent merchant who was the last heir to an ancient empire representing Catherage while the other PC was a warrior butler who represented Rome. I've played Vow of Peace healers, and Amazon Battle Maidens, murderous Deathstalkers, and hardworking merchants.

All in all there is probably only things you can truly tell about me, is that I find the mundane fascinating and play female characters.

But by all means, please try to judge me, I want to see what other secrets I've given out in this post.

Unfortunately I don't have enough insight into those characters to play armchair psychologist (although I sincerely love playing armchair psychologist, mind you). Your assessment seems as likely as any. Have you read a lot on Jung, by chance?

Vitruviansquid
2013-10-10, 06:52 PM
Let's not simplify "judge people based on how they roleplay" to mean "think people only roleplay what they want to be."

If someone wants to play a misandrist amazon, I'm probably not going to judge them as a someone who secretly hates men. I might judge them to be someone interested in social issues, or someone interested in challenging roleplay, or someone interested by gender issues. Not all of these judgments will have positive or negative connotations attached to them, either. But there will always be judgments based on what people roleplay because, hell, humans judge each other based on even more superficial things like clothing or even height, so isn't it a bit of hubris to claim there's any situation at all that you're not judging someone?

And actually, I doubt very many people on the forum actually try to judge people based on how they roleplay, strictly speaking. But, there are a lot of other things we judge each other on when we do roleplay, that we try to.

If a DM pulls out a setting based on sexist ideals, the players may judge him for...

- not being able to recognize his setting is based on sexist ideals
- springing the setting on a set of strangers who he is not sure will be okay with it, without prior warning or agreement
- arguing with someone who doesn't want to play in the setting, perhaps by espousing actually sexist views in the process of the argument

... and these are not fallacious. These things speak to what kind of person the DM is because they are telling about his behavior outside of that fantasy make-believe zone that is roleplaying.

Themrys
2013-10-10, 06:54 PM
The point being made was that all the player wants to play, is someone prejudiced- for the roleplaying challenge- they don't care what the prejudice is- and they're willing to change it if the other players are made uncomfortable by it.


And that's the only thing that really matters.

I suggested various characters to the GM of my current group, and he decided against the flirtatious male thief character who disguises as prostitute. That's fine, I somewhat expected that he wouldn't like to have to roleplay pretty ladies all the time. :smallbiggrin:

I am always willing to change a character if other players or the GM are not comfortable with it for valid reasons. Not wanting to roleplay flirting is a valid reason. As is not wanting to roleplay living in a sexist or otherwise hostile world when no such thing is part of the game system used.
Actually, I even change characters based on what fits into the group - can't play a necromancer in the same group with a priest, for example.

I don't judge people for playing evil necromancers, but I do judge people for insisting on playing an evil necromancer if someone else in the group has an irrational fear of corpses, OR if everyone else wants to play priests of the god of justice and light.



See, I don't think that's necessarily a fair assessment. Is a misandrist Amazon less offensive than a misogynistic anything-else? Not really.

It is less offensive. There has never been such a thing as a misandrist amazon in real life, which is why there cannot be a player who is traumatized by being oppressed by misandrist amazons.

Of course, if a player requested that I do not play a misandrist amazon as it reminds him of his dominant mother, I'd respect that. But it is unlikely to happen.

If your group is fine with you playing an over-the-top sexist character who you obviously don't identify with, that's nice. But it wouldn't be okay to insist on playing that character if someone in the group was made uncomfortable by it.

Subaru Kujo
2013-10-10, 07:08 PM
Played a couple really fun ones over the years.

Lawful Neutral fighter of St. Cuthbert by the name of Neimi (my first, and probably best character). Orphaned during her teens by a goblin attack that killed her mother and father for sure, and presumably her brother (she finds out he still survived later on). Her story is learning to live and let die. And let die she did: you guys know how the stereotypical St. Cuthbertian is ("How did you get through Izog?" The elven prisoner asks. "With a sword." Neimi says flatly). She did start to lighten up towards the end though.

She also was working on romancing the party's wizard (a bit indirectly, really: she respected him for being willing to take the front lines, as squishy as a wizard is, as opposed to one of her previous (cowardly as sin) suitors that she broke the cheekbone of when he got too pushy for her liking) though their relationship was a bit rough. He of course, thought Neimi dunking his drunk arse into the river for flirting with the elven pet shop owner was a sign of affection. Nek-Terra was always somewhat special.

A chaotic neutral Rogue of Olidammara who was noteworthy because I managed to piss off the entire group through an act of mercy (mostly evil groups get pissed off if you try to bleed out their Succubi boss's pet Angel), and managed to work her way back into the group, only to help cause the death of most of them. She didn't take IC threats to being raped and killed (not necessarily in that order) kindly. Manipulation at its finest.

oudeis
2013-10-10, 07:28 PM
You can't judge a player by one character concept or roleplaying style. For example, say a new player comes into the group with a Paladin who thinks women are weak and devious and need to be controlled by men. He could be playing the character for laughs as a pathetic tool, or to satirize in-depth a philosophy he finds pathetic, or as a prelude to a spiritual epiphany where he realizes the error of his ways and grows to become a true champion of Good. On the other hand, if you know the player already (or get to know the new player out of game), and not only does he constantly play this type of character, but he has let slip some the same attitudes in real life, then you can take this as confirmation that he has some serious issues with women.

As for the has-been fighter with the beer gut and delusions of manliness mentioned above, the character is so over-the-top and so clearly meant to be a comic figure that taking it seriously and getting your nose out of joint about it says far more about you than it does about the player.

The Oni
2013-10-10, 07:35 PM
It is less offensive. There has never been such a thing as a misandrist amazon in real life, which is why there cannot be a player who is traumatized by being oppressed by misandrist amazons.

But there HAVE been such things, IRL, as misandrists, and it's hardly unreasonable to think that some of those misandrists might also be fighterly types, yeah? I'd really hate for this to turn into a feminism argument. Or the inverse, for that matter; neither are very productive (and it's awfully hard to convert in either case!)

The idea of being traumatized by a D&D character or campaign is pretty alien to me. However, I wholly agree that character concepts that make people uncomfortable are not good practice; if one player is not having fun it will drag the whole campaign down.

The Oni
2013-10-10, 07:39 PM
Played a couple really fun ones over the years.

Lawful Neutral fighter of St. Cuthbert by the name of Neimi (my first, and probably best character). Orphaned during her teens by a goblin attack that killed her mother and father for sure, and presumably her brother (she finds out he still survived later on). Her story is learning to live and let die. And let die she did: you guys know how the stereotypical St. Cuthbertian is ("How did you get through Izog?" The elven prisoner asks. "With a sword." Neimi says flatly). She did start to lighten up towards the end though.

She also was working on romancing the party's wizard (a bit indirectly, really: she respected him for being willing to take the front lines, as squishy as a wizard is, as opposed to one of her previous (cowardly as sin) suitors that she broke the cheekbone of when he got too pushy for her liking) though their relationship was a bit rough. He of course, thought Neimi dunking his drunk arse into the river for flirting with the elven pet shop owner was a sign of affection. Nek-Terra was always somewhat special.

A chaotic neutral Rogue of Olidammara who was noteworthy because I managed to piss off the entire group through an act of mercy (mostly evil groups get pissed off if you try to bleed out their Succubi boss's pet Angel), and managed to work her way back into the group, only to help cause the death of most of them. She didn't take IC threats to being raped and killed (not necessarily in that order) kindly. Manipulation at its finest.

...You've got a thing for strong and morally ambiguous women?

navar100
2013-10-10, 07:43 PM
I only care if the player is being a Real Jerk in game. If he is being a Real Jerk, I have only contempt for him. I have long since learned I don't have to put with it. If I'm the new guy to the group in which he's a regular, I don't stay and I'll tell the DM why. If he's the new guy, I tell the DM he must go or change behavior. If we're both the new guy, I tell the DM and a choice has to be made whether I leave or he does or change behavior.

GolemsVoice
2013-10-10, 07:47 PM
It really depends, but often, you'll quickly find out. There are players whose characters often match their real world preferences, be it the kind of characters, like somebody who only plays elves, or characters focused on strength, or ideologies, like somebody who'll only play good characters, and so on.

There's a blog floating around on this forum, the SUE files, where all of the writers' problems stem from the horrible person their DM is.

Themrys
2013-10-10, 07:48 PM
But there HAVE been such things, IRL, as misandrists, and it's hardly unreasonable to think that some of those misandrists might also be fighterly types, yeah?

Maybe, but there are not enough female misandrists for it to be likely that someone experienced oppression by them, while the opposite is true for male misogynists.

My point was: The more often something happens in real life, the more likely that someone will be offended by it in a roleplaying game. It does not really matter in pen&paper rpg, since when someone is offended, that should be respected, and if no one is, everything is fine, but it does matter in larp, where you don't know everyone beforehand.

The Oni
2013-10-10, 07:51 PM
Oh. Well, I can see how LARP might be a little different, especially if the players are really good actors.


I don't judge people for playing evil necromancers, but I do judge people for insisting on playing an evil necromancer if someone else in the group has an irrational fear of corpses, OR if everyone else wants to play priests of the god of justice and light.

This, however, is stupid. Plainly stupid. D&D is a game where combat takes place and in 95% of games, stuff will die and leave corpses. If a player is traumatized by that they need to find another game; this is going to severely limit the action of the game.

Gavran
2013-10-10, 07:59 PM
Is "higher probability that someone will be offended because they belong to a larger group" the same as "more offensive"? I don't think so*. Nor do I think that "no, you can't be a misogynist, be a misandrist" is okay.

I think "I'm bothered by gender discrimination, would you consider playing down that part of your character?" is much better.

*It really sounds like the standard "Us vs Them" that a lot of these kinds of issues root from, honestly.


This, however, is stupid. Plainly stupid. D&D is a game where combat takes place and in 95% of games, stuff will die and leave corpses. If a player is traumatized by that they need to find another game; this is going to severely limit the action of the game.

For playing with any random D&D group? Yeah, probably. If this hypothetical person was one of my friends that I wanted to play with? Go go non-violent campaign where the party has to take enemies unconscious for whatever reason (off the top of my head I'm thinking imperial / divine decree.) The rules for it already exist, even.

Lord Raziere
2013-10-10, 08:02 PM
I dunno.

I mean, I mostly tend to play characters that in some way match up with my beliefs when I'm the player. because really, you can't make a character without first having the potential to in some way, become that character, at least to my perspective.

it doesn't mean that you ARE that character, it just means that there might be a slight likelihood that could become one if placed into a similar situation. maybe.
because to me, characters are in some way, made from your mind and soul. that possibility came from within you and you judged it as something fun to act out and play as.

it doesn't mean you are that character, it just means that the possibility, no matter how slight, is within you to become such a character if given the chance. and I think everyone has little possibilities like that within them, both for good and for bad.

and I don't really play evil characters as a result. I think I've tried playing one, once, but all he did was pretty much backstab eviller guys and made villainous speeches. I don't remember him much anymore, so I guess the possibility of him is also fading.

though since these supernatural powers are impossible, we will never be put into such situations to become such people, so be thankful or whatever.

but still, I pretty much play good characters no matter what, even if the good in question is a rebellious clever good with lots of dark is not evil and hardships…and I would be lying if this in some way wasn't a reflection of myself, and my own knowledge of things, and at least some of my own beliefs. roleplaying is a form of interactive media, and all media shapes us in some way.

Tim Proctor
2013-10-10, 08:23 PM
Judging people is wrong.... mkay.

I don't think that you can judge people by their roleplaying, but their reaction to roleplaying. There are toxic people in the world, and some of the playing RPGs and such.

There are people that aren't really hypersensitive that claim/pretend to be just so they can attempt to cause other people a level of uncomfortableness while they sit in the alleged 'victim' position. I once had a player that threw a hissy fit because I had elves, half-elves, gnomes, halflings, etc. as slaves while Humans, orcs, and dwarves controlled the lands with giant militant kingdoms. They called me a "misogynist" and "racist" because elves are people too, and I took the more effeminate races and subjugated them. Oh she got mad and tried to convince the rest of the group to leave my "bigoted ass" by going behind my back and talking to the group members and telling them how nasty I was, that I would have slaves in a game. So when the session rolled around it took literally 40-seconds of talking after listening to her complaints for 5 or so minutes before it was evident to everyone there that she wanted to be the victim and take someone 'who was in the perceived position of power' (DM) down, thus empowering herself. We unanimously voted to kick her out.

I had another case where a player put his character in love with his GF's character, and got really mad when his GF's character died. He then made a character whose sole purpose was resurrecting his dead brother so that he could have that relationship. Anyways he thought I was out to get him and being antagonistic because this was a no-resurrection campaign, and basically wanted to 'leave the group' because I was being an ass. The guy is actually really cool IRL, but once I asked him why he was mad (because he didn't tell me anything at all) he explained his situation and that he felt I was out of get him. I then pointed out that he explained none of this, role played none of this, and communicated none of it. The other players agreed, the background 'from the war-torn battle lands' and the role playing of being nice to the character in the team with 22 Charisma doesn't help. Anyways it was all hashed out, but that is an example that you can't jump to conclusions.

In 20-years of playing those are the only real issues related to role-playing. I had one player get drunk and grope a female player but that had nothing to do with role-playing.

Don't judge people until you have enough evidence to convict in front of a jury of your peers.


Maybe, but there are not enough female misandrists for it to be likely that someone experienced oppression by them, while the opposite is true for male misogynists.
Oh, I 100% disagree with this. I have been working in HR for 15-years and have seen a lot more of this than misogynists. The difference is that most men won't complain about it, while women are significantly more likely to. The bottomline is that it probably happens in equal portions, at least from all statistics I've seen, but the likelihood of a complainant is significantly different.

Think about every time you've heard someone say a comment about people thinking with the other head, that is a very misandristic comment. Or a comment about how a guy should be able to do the lifting of a heavy object. I could go on and on and on, but these things are everywhere.

Subaru Kujo
2013-10-10, 08:30 PM
...You've got a thing for strong and morally ambiguous women?

Strong women, sure. Morally ambiguous is optional. Wanted a hardnosed paladin without being one for the first, then a break from that (the rogue), because the fighter, while fun, was just a pain to pull off reliably. Because you know, executing a known and self-professed slaver should be easy for the follower of Cuthbert. After all, she broke the law and beat the living crap out of one of your friends. It would be time to pay up in full. Ain't that easy to want to do. But your character would, so you do. Stupid as it sounds, it's a bit draining after a while.

One Step Two
2013-10-10, 08:57 PM
To it's core, judging people for what they play, and the act of judging them itself says alot about who we are. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a character is just a character.

Leaving specific examples aside, what if I want to play a conflicting character? Out of game I apologise for it, but I find myself absolutely in-love with the idea of a character that in some-way acts antagonistic to a belief you my hold in real life, because I think it would make for great drama and an interesting character some ways?

I'd like to think, if a group, or if only one person, finds it objectionable, that we can find precisely where the line is, and I avoid it. The idea is to use it as a platform for the party to make some choices in character, either to try and influence my chracters beliefs and behavours, or use it to fuel a inter-party rivalry. I like the idea of character growth, whether it's finding a middle ground, gruding respect, or even if it is as unsubtle as waking up one night to find myself hog-tied and threatened against acting in that manner.

The Oni
2013-10-10, 09:00 PM
Sure. A party that always gets along is a boring party, plain and simple.

veti
2013-10-10, 09:31 PM
The point being made was that all the player wants to play, is someone prejudiced- for the roleplaying challenge- they don't care what the prejudice is- and they're willing to change it if the other players are made uncomfortable by it.

That assumes that all prejudice is the same, and "racial prejudice against $IMAGINARY_GROUP" will create all the same roleplaying oppurtunities as "gender prejudice against women". Which seems to me a very, very questionable assumption.

Personally, I feel uncomfortable playing with judgmental people who I feel will be constantly scrutinising my behaviour for politically incorrect attitudes. I go into a game session expecting to "commit" some combination of grand and petty larceny, deception, blackmail, trespassing, assault, murder, espionage, misrepresentation, more murder, resisting arrest, perjury, fraud, malfeasance, arson, blasphemy, burglary, perverting the course of justice and, on a good day, public exposure. (When I'm playing a Good character, that is. If I'm Evil, things can get nasty.)

And if a player is OK with all of that, but is going to get all squirmy when my character ogles a barmaid - I really, seriously have to question their sense of balance.

WeLoveFireballs
2013-10-10, 10:32 PM
I suppose if I look back all my characters have had unflinching dedicated convictions, be they zealous priests, freedom loving rogues or ruthless bastards unwilling to compromise his anti-elf "principals" as we'll as murdering anything he wants to, no matter how long it takes.

You can probably tell something about my personality from that central theme, I did that almost always do this unconsciously. However each had utterly different convictions. You might be able to glean a personality, but not an ideology, if they are a half decent roleplayer they can play someone with a different ideology (being accepting of slavery for instance) but playing a different personality is harder.

Sith_Happens
2013-10-10, 10:35 PM
Personally, I feel uncomfortable playing with judgmental people who I feel will be constantly scrutinising my behaviour for politically incorrect attitudes. I go into a game session expecting to "commit" some combination of grand and petty larceny, deception, blackmail, trespassing, assault, murder, espionage, misrepresentation, more murder, resisting arrest, perjury, fraud, malfeasance, arson, blasphemy, burglary, perverting the course of justice and, on a good day, public exposure. (When I'm playing a Good character, that is. If I'm Evil, things can get nasty.)

This quote is beautiful.

NichG
2013-10-10, 10:46 PM
This.

And if someone is not interested in whether other players have fun, too, this says a whole lot about that person.


I have to say I'm rather annoyed that you quoted the one piece of my post and left out the entire rest of the thing that qualifies why that statement needs to be dealt with very carefully and is not a justification for snap judgements and assessments.

You are in fact disagreeing with my point of view and by quoting me like this you imply that I agree with the rest of what you say in your post. I would request that you not do that.

One Step Two
2013-10-10, 11:18 PM
Well I think any social interaction with a person can provide information to their real self, even if the interaction is them pretending to be a fictional character.

But I think people vastly oversimplify the process of obtaining that information. The better the roleplayer, the harder it will be to tell if they're playing something because of their own issues or because they're able to separate themselves from their character just that cleanly. So if you really want to psychoanalyze someone from their roleplay its never going to be as clear-cut as 'if they play a character who is sexist then they're sexist'. It would be more like, over many campaigns, do they always play a sexist character?

Even then, there could be many reasons - are they doing it because they are enjoying the escapism of being sexist in a fictional world where that's okay, are they doing it in order to lambast or satirize it, etc. Its possible to pick apart these reasons if you play with someone for a long time, but not with a simple generalization.

Also, just because you can analyze a person doesn't mean its a good idea to do so. No one is 'perfect' and no one will have exactly the same worldview. If you're personally bothered by other people holding certain views, its better not to know everything about the people around you so you can actually function in a social group. In the average group of 6 people, at least one person is going to hold at least one view that seems wrongheaded, crazy, or even offensive to someone else in the group, be it a casual '-ism' that they grew up with, a political or religious view, etc.

I agree with this post wholeheartedly.

Just to throw some more coppers into the mix, because NichG makes some good points in his original post, that I would like to expand upon.

Role-playing can be seen as a form of escapism or catharsis. I have a friend who is a self proclaimed card-carrying Marxist. But he has on two separate occasions played a total money-grubbing back-stabbing social-climbers, which he despises in real life.
It's not done satirically or to decry it (not by intention anyway) but he does it because it's an intellectual role-playing challenge. If you had never met him before, you'd think he wanted to be a war profiteer from how well he handles the role, and you'd be totally wrong about him.
And to be completely honest, if I've offended someone in my role-playing of something confrontational, then I would take it as a compliment, because it means I've managed to capture the role without making it seem farcical. But I would be certain to apologise if it goes too far.

An example of keeping such a role within reason, I am currently running a game where the group has run across a Noble, who is a Classist and as arrogant as the day is long. To one player, he is the bane of his life. The Noble had bested him in a duel earlier in the game, and later, when the player managed his reprisal, the Noble never lost his spirit, and kept his dignity as best he could. As a result, despite winning my player still loathes the Noble but gives him grudging respect, while the other players find him quite inspiring.
He looked down his nose at anyone beneath his station, ignored the low-born party members, but when they needed aid, he was happy to show them that the Nobility were the ones to seek for it. He polarized the party by being a total snob.

I guess it was a round about way of saying, that if the character has a quality which is antagonising, that there should be more to him than that. Whether being an "-ist" of some variety, or displaying an "-ism". Like all things, it needs a reason, and it needs to enhance the game, not detract, even if it does ruffle feathers.

Scow2
2013-10-10, 11:22 PM
Sure. A party that always gets along is a boring party, plain and simple.Meh... I'd prefer a boring party, because the campaign itself and unintentional interplayer disputes add enough excitement to the game anyway. Throwing deliberate intraparty conflict on top of that makes the game overwhelming and adds too much noise.

tasw
2013-10-11, 12:46 AM
I think it's a well known fact that discussing real life issues in relation to roleplaying games is a sure way to get your thread locked on this forum, which is understandable because said discussions tend to become very heated very fast.
The reason seems to be that there is a whole lot of people that can make pretty heavy accusations and judge the morals and beliefs of someone based almost exlusively on how they handle roleplaying.

Which I think raises an interesting point: how much can you really tell about a person and his moral values from the way they roleplay, either as a player or as a GM?

My personal opinion is that you can't really tell all that much. Roleplaying implies playing a role which more often then not tends to be something very different from what you are in real life. Not only that, but your preferences about what kind of situations you would like to roleplay isn't necessarely representative of how you'd like to live your life. You may like action oriented adventures, but it doesn't mean that you'd like to kill someone in real life. You may like to roleplay scumbags, but it doesn't mean you are one in real life.
Even as a GM the way you shape the world isn't representative of your values. I personally like dystopian settings a la Warhammer 40k, but I don't support the typical political and moral beliefs that are going to be common in those settings.

And yet it seems that according to some people, roleplaying should always accomodate the real life ideologies of everyone involved. Basically, it seems that if there is sexism in the setting, then it's your right to be offended by it even if it's not real sexism, being that it's not directed at a real person and it's not meant to convey a pro-sexist message, and call out your GM on that.
Or, if a player wants to roleplay a sexist character then he must be sexist as well, and if his character makes a sexist comment about my female character then I have every right to call him out on that.
(I'm only using sexism as an exemple, it could be anything, from racism to homophobia, etc...)
What confuses me even further is that no one ever calls the GM or a player a pro-murderer just because there is plenty of killing in the typical roleplaying game, even if arguably killing a fellow human being is the most horribile act you can possibly do, since it's the ultimate form of violation, taking away the possibility of living.

But at last this seems the mentality of at least some people I've seen around here.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have comfort zones when it comes to roleplaying. Everyone has preferences and it's obvious that one shouldn't be forced to roleplay a situation he or she isn't comfortable with, this isn't a discussion to talk about uncomfortable situations in games. What I'm talking about is passing judgment on a real person based on what happens in a roleplaying game.
This seems to be most frequent towards GMs, but I've seen players being victim of this too.

I'd like to hear your opinion on the matter.

I think its stupid to judge people based on RP.

As a GM I have some NPC's who are racist, or sexist, or murderous, or greedy, or absolutely Immoral in any way shape or form as long as it benefits them.

Those characters arent presented as the norm. But they do exist and some NPC's will have those characteristics.

As a player my favorite character was a lawful evil dwarf fighter from a slave holding culture based on Sparta. He thought everyone and everything non dwarf was intrinsically inferior simply by being non dwarf. Do I think short bearded Spartans were the best humanity can offer? LOL no. Not even Greek, not a drop. And not short. So thats just silly to assume.

But that dwarf was one vicious, racist, evil bastard. And he made no qualms about it to anyone. And would happily lop the head off of anyone who disputed it with him.

Why was it fun? Because I like dwarves, I like the movie 300 and i wanted to play an evil character for once. So I put it all together and said to myself "what it Sparta was dwarves in a D&D world and rather then representing the best of that society, what if my dwarf represents the worst of it"? And he was a damn blast to play.

My best player ever was a slightly pervy cleric who was very human centric racist. But with a sarcastic funny twist (usually).

Is he pervy in real life? Known him for 2 years now and I have no reason at all to think he is.

Is he racist? He's jewish and dating a hispanic girl he's in love with. So probably not.

If you didnt know him and had only gamed with him though you might think was a creepy perv from the Hitler youth. He's not. Not even close. But he's acting out a character thats very different from himself in real life.

Some people like putting themselves in the fantasy role.
Some people like putting their polar opposite in that same role and playing him.

Both are equally valid escapism.

As a GM, if your goal is to make a believable, real feeling world (and mine is) then that world will have NPC's with every opinion under the sun. And some will be distasteful. Those are opportunities for the players to explore and expand their characters with regards to how they deal with it, including those people sometimes being in a position of power such that "chop his head off" isnt a good option.

If my players as a group decided one of these characters was so vile he had to be removed and worked within the worlds framework to do so I would absolutely roll with it and they might succeed. That says something about their characters.

Not doing so, or actively agreeing with him says something too about those CHARACTERS. Nothing at all about the players. But a great deal about the characters.

tasw
2013-10-11, 01:00 AM
Honestly, I think a lot of the armchair psychologists on the internet tend to judge people not on "wanting to play a sexist," but on whether they like settings that are hip to whatever social causes the armchair psychologists believe to be important. It's why we get people being offended when a situation is handled as anything other than the glowing paragon of virtue or the disgusting horrible evil that they believe it would be in the real world.

We tend, I think, to see more people accusing others of bigotry (and especially "soft" bigotry through whatever method the armchair psychologist has invented to "prove" that not doing it exactly how they want it done is actually unacknowledged bigotry) when said people's portrayal of something in a game doesn't match how those armchair psychologists believe it should be portrayed.

Have "usually evil" races? Obviously closet racism designed to pastiche real human skin colors and cultures, because the armchair psychologist says so. You have to do it THEIR way - whether that be "all races can be all things, and you can't make any educated guesses until you investigate the situation thoroughly each time" or "your good race had better recognize women as equal to men in all ways" or "your evil race can't have homosexuality as part of its culture because that's saying homosexuality is evil!" or even "your good race had better NOT treat women as identical to men, because no good race would put women on the front lines in a war!" - or YOU are a BAD PERSON because obviously not depicting it the way they would means you're supporting social injustice, or (on the other side, though that seems a lot rarer on the internet in RPG forums, in my experience) you're undermining the moral fabric of society by depicting good as bad and bad as good.

I do get very tired of social crusading. I don't like seeing it hidden in my games, settings, and fiction, but I'll generally accept it as long as my own takes and spins on things are respected. I REALLY don't like seeing it used to attack settings I like on the basis that not only is that setting and its writers promoting "soft bigotry" and "hate," but that anybody who likes it is either too stupid to see it or is a bad person, themselves (or, more likely, both) for not hating it just like the social crusaders do.

Ultimately, I think it is social crusading that causes these vitriolic problems. Your depiction of a fictional situation doesn't paint it in the good or bad light that somebody else feels the situation would represent in real life. Because of this, you are revealing that you are a bigot. After all, only a bigot would think good could come of [social injustice of choice]. And even denying that there is social injustice is proof that you're a bigot.

It's intollerance of perceived intollerance, and a will, nay, a delight in denying the legitimacy of anybody having views different from one's own. You have to like and accept everything they've deemed acceptable and laudible, or you are a bad person. You aren't just disagreeing with them, but actively - by not joining in their hatred of the object of ridicule - oppressing whoever they're crusading for. Often, themselves, in some way. And it can't ever be the reverse; they can't be oppressing you, because you're a bad person and bad people are the oppressors. Your opinion is evil and must be expunged. You can't be allowed to continue minding your own business because that's "soft" bigotry. All things - all role playing, all fiction - must reflect the social justice view of the speaker, because anything that doesn't is active oppression.



I guess what I'm saying is: if you don't like something in fiction, don't hate the people who do like it. Not everything is a social justice cause, and not everything you disagree with is reflective of psychological problems in those who believe it.

But we wind up with these arguments that become personal because fiction is rooted, one way or another, in our beliefs about the real world. So when we see fiction, say, that depicts Communist Russia as a utopia and the USA in the mid-1900s as a barren wasteland filled with greed and hate, those of us who feel that America had some awesome years in that period and that Communism is in fact a source of great evil when put into practice might be a bit offended. But at the same time, those who feel that America WAS (and maybe still is) a wasteland of greed and hate might feel anybody who decries that fiction as flawed is actually a bad person who is trying to justify greed and corruption.

Fiction is, too often, propaganda, and there are people who think that any fiction that isn't actively propagandizing for their social cause of choice is actively oppressing it.

we need a +1 function in this forum


How about when "how they role-play" squicks-out everyone else at the table?

Does it happen? and what do people tend to conclude when it happens a lot?

Depends. Are you squicked out because the player thinks most soldiers are men and that sort of traditional gender role is evil or are you squicked out because the player wants to know how much he can sell elven children for on the sex slave circuit.

In case 1. Grow up

In case 2. have a real long, hard talk with the player after session and if anything at all strikes you as thinking this guy thinks kiddie sex rings are okay boot his ass and remember his face for the authorities in the future.



Only a handful of gamers can role play anything. The rest are stuck just being slight variations of themselves.

I strongly disagree with this. The vast majority of people I have gamed with over 20 years had characters with very little in common with themselves.

Gaming is escapism. One rarely escapes to a fantasy world to be their their 9-5 self. It happens sometimes. But in my experience, rarely.

SowZ
2013-10-11, 01:23 AM
Sometimes I intentionally try and to characters with other beliefs than mine. Opposite political beliefs, different cultural background so different ideas on concepts like liberty or family, different religion, etc. I find its a great way to empathize and be a less judgemental person.

Also, I sometimes play outright villains, (I usually try to make them deep with understandable motivations,) because it is interesting. I often play total introverts and stand offish jerks even though I am extroverted and friendly in real life. While I share some traits with each of my characters, there is no trait I share with all of them. I don't know how well you could analyze me from my characters. Probably not very well.

tasw
2013-10-11, 01:29 AM
This.

And if someone is not interested in whether other players have fun, too, this says a whole lot about that person.

If a man plays a sexist male character, he's Schroedinger's sexist, so to speak.
When I tell him that I don't feel comfortable with sexism in the game and would prefer him to play a non-sexist character, and he then insists that my fun is irrelevant, then he has proven himself to be a terrible person and very likely sexist, too, although that doesn't matter, since I don't want to roleplay with him anyway.
If, on the other hand, he calmly explains that he thinks prejudiced characters are a good opportunity for roleplaying conflict, and agrees to play a misandrist amazon instead, or a character who hates elves, or whatever all players at the table feel comfortable with, he has proven himself to be okay and not a sexist.


And that goes for all roles one can play. In larp, I have been lucky enough to have never encountered the "mysterious" assassin who murders ordinary people on their way to the loo, for no other reason than the fact that the player wants to be a mysterious assassin.
I am perfectly happy with that, and, as a matter of fact, would judge the player of said assassin. Negatively. It is well known that almost no one wants their player character murdered, which is why no one in their right mind would play an assassin who actually murders player characters.

It is usually quite easy to tell whether someone plays an unlikable character because they really are like that, or whether they do it because they think it's fun for everyone.
That's because someone who wants everyone to have fun will not look for an easy victim to murder/spew their hate to, but for someone who has fun talking to, or otherwise interacting with their unlikable character.

With GMs, it can be a bit trickier, but complaining will make everything clear in that case, too.
If they don't think that everyone should have fun, they are terrible people.

Would you then agree that a person who writes a complex backstory involving future heavy RP that would force the other players around the table to sit and twiddle their thumbs while that PC played out their private fantasy relationship with a GM who didnt want to RP that way was actually a selfish **** going out of their way to infringe on the other players free time by making them spectators for hours on end to this one players fantasy?

After all if ALL the players matter, then ALL the players matter. Including the ones at the table who dont want to watch you fantasy date during their free time with someone who doesnt want to fantasy date you and just want to kill orcs and get treasure to unwind after work.




It is less offensive. There has never been such a thing as a misandrist amazon in real life,.

Married one. Yes there is. It was very offensive.

hamishspence
2013-10-11, 01:59 AM
While Case 2 is an extreme example- it is on the continuum I was thinking of.

It isn't just players- it might be DMs as well.

Black Jester
2013-10-11, 04:55 AM
I don't think that it is a feasible idea to draw a distinct life between 'real life' on the one hand and roleplaying games on the other hand. If you engage in an RPG, it is a part of your real life, just one you spent playing a game. And these games do not take place in vacuum - they are played by real people with real issues, problems, agendas, ideals and so on. And just because it is a hobby doesn't mean it is beyond criticism. Just because you deal with any issue for the purpose of amusement, doesn't mean that you cannot create misgivings or handle the issue inappropriately.

I have argued in the past and will continue to do so, that there is no moral imperative what are good, clean roleplaying topics and which aren't and should be avoided. The important issue is not what you depict in a game, but how you do it. Just to pick up the sexism example, you can have a setting where strong prejudices against certain genders exist, and have a plot about overcoming these obstacles and make it a very satisfying and empowering experience. The attitude towards an issue is often more important than the issue themselves.

For me, this means it is usually a fallacy to judge people on the issues they depict. Because you can handle pretty much any topic with different degrees of respect, differentiation and appropriateness. And in my opinion there is a very large area of different but okay representations about pretty much everything, and usually any misgivings are more likely to be the results of a more superficial regard for the issue, different leanings or just oversights than malicious intents.
For me, there are no taboo topics, but there are forms of handling these topics I am not comfortable with and if it concerns me (because it happens in my group), I am self-righteous enough to mention that.

Because the most important questions are actually not if you can or cannot judge the game by the way it is played; The truly important one is who actually can justifiably form an opinion on the issue and which form this criticism should take. I think this is very hard if not impossible for outsiders who have not experienced the actual game or were directly involved because they at best have a second hand impression of what is actually going on. Roleplaying games are not a public event; they are meant for the people who play it and the report of these events aren't the same thing as actually being there, the same way that listening to a life recording is not the same at being there at the concert.
The form of the criticism is the other issue I consider really relevant. Because it is way too easy to be alarmed, agitated and confrontational and thus provoke not a change but a more rigid and stubborn position and thus achieve nothing. It is basically wasting effort on a discussion which only knows losers. Nothing is achieved, nothing is changed, you have an argument, and everybody is both angry and feels more self-righteous about his position. Good criticism should be differentiated, mostly constructive, well informed and most importantly calm and fair.

Now, this is probably more idealistic than realistic to expect that any of this issues will be discussed calm, civilized or factual, because if it is relevant enough to anybody to provoke such a discussion, it is highly unlikely that this is not a passionate topic after all.But at least one can try, right?

Themrys
2013-10-11, 05:39 AM
Would you then agree that a person who writes a complex backstory involving future heavy RP that would force the other players around the table to sit and twiddle their thumbs while that PC played out their private fantasy relationship with a GM who didnt want to RP that way was actually a selfish **** going out of their way to infringe on the other players free time by making them spectators for hours on end to this one players fantasy?

After all if ALL the players matter, then ALL the players matter. Including the ones at the table who dont want to watch you fantasy date during their free time with someone who doesnt want to fantasy date you and just want to kill orcs and get treasure to unwind after work.



Married one. Yes there is. It was very offensive.


Ah, you have read my thread and are now trying to insult me. How mature!
You know **** about my roleplaying group, be aware of that. The GM had the power to not make my character's backstory come up at all, or decide against the character in the first place, and the other players had plenty of time to complain beforehand.
None of them wants to kill orcs and get treasure. We're not playing D&D.


And no, you did not marry a misandrist amazon in real life. If at all, you married a misandrist. There are no amazons in real life. It's a pity, yes, but that's the way it is.

On the other hand, maybe she doesn't hate men, maybe she only hates you. I would absolutely understand that.

You're going to my ignore list.

Themrys
2013-10-11, 05:57 AM
I have to say I'm rather annoyed that you quoted the one piece of my post and left out the entire rest of the thing that qualifies why that statement needs to be dealt with very carefully and is not a justification for snap judgements and assessments.

You are in fact disagreeing with my point of view and by quoting me like this you imply that I agree with the rest of what you say in your post. I would request that you not do that.

Well, maybe you should not write something that you don't actually think is true, then.

I never wrote I was for "snap judgements" or anything like that. If you interpreted my posts in that way, that's purely your imagination.

But far be it from me to agree with someone who wants to disagree with me.





I have argued in the past and will continue to do so, that there is no moral imperative what are good, clean roleplaying topics and which aren't and should be avoided. The important issue is not what you depict in a game, but how you do it.

Well, since you have not yet requested that I don't agree with you, I'll agree with you on that ... it IS important how you depict something in a game, BUT part of that HOW is whether you ASK people whether they WANT that issue depicted in a game they play.

If someone requested that there be no famine in the game because that reminds him of his granddaddy who died in a famine, then it does not matter how you show that famine in the game, you have already done it the most insensitive manner you could have by depicting it at all.

Kalmageddon
2013-10-11, 06:11 AM
Well, maybe you should not write something that you don't actually think is true, then.

I never wrote I was for "snap judgements" or anything like that. I you interpreted my posts in that way, that's purely your imagination.

But far be it from me to agree with someone who wants to disagree with me.

I would invite you to be less arrogant and defensive on this thread, up unil now everyone has been very mature. If so many people are trying to distance themselves from your point of view it might be because there are issues with what you are saying that maybe you aren't considering enough.

See, on one hand, you are basically saying that everyone at the gaming table should take care not to offend others, which is perfectly fine.
On the other hand, you call everyone disagreeing with you or failing to meet your standards a mysoginist or a bad person.

You are also assuming by defaul that when someone is offended by something it's the responsability of the offender alone to change the situation, when in a gaming group you should sometimes let things slide, develop some thick skin basically. It's just a game after all and while it should be fun for everyone involved you shouldn't be so serious about it.
You can't seriously expect everyone to have your degree of sensitivity and you shouldn't assume that everyone who doesn't is a bad person. And aside from that, would you alter your character if a player came out and called it misandrist? Would you have the same degree of sensitivity when it comes to someone's else issues?
Maybe you would, but reading your posts one would immagine the opposite.

With that said, I'd invite everyone to remain calm and civil, there have been a lot of good posts on this thread and I would like the discussion to keep going and not get locked. :smallsmile:

Black Jester
2013-10-11, 08:00 AM
Well, since you have not yet requested that I don't agree with you, I'll agree with you on that ... it IS important how you depict something in a game, BUT part of that HOW is whether you ASK people whether they WANT that issue depicted in a game they play.


Why should I request you from agreeing with me? I like it when people agree with my opinions. I think they are pretty good opinions most of the time.




If someone requested that there be no famine in the game because that reminds him of his granddaddy who died in a famine, then it does not matter how you show that famine in the game, you have already done it the most insensitive manner you could have by depicting it at all.

Ah, yes, and if I am concerned about the game being overtly naive and idealistic and all people are depicted more how people should be and less how people actually are, that the setting seems much too convenient and romanticized and life should depicted more a long the lines of being solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short?
Or that I am actually really uncomfortable with this steady, willful ignorance of the more darker aspects of human nature and therefore wanting a more ambivalent setting and this romanticized depiction whitewashes and blatantly downplays actual grievances and problems to a degree that these actual problems are treated as surreal or irrelevant?
Or that I am concerned that in a faux medieval world, people are probably more likely to be uneducated and bigoted than being cosmopolitan and tolerant?
What makes your concerns and sensitivities any more relevant than mine?

And yes, these are concerns I actually have in a game. Not as exaggerated as that, but for the most part, the omnipresent rose-tinted glasses look gives me eye-sores and the excessive sugar-coating gives me diabetes, and I am much more comfortable with including any issue and treat it with the respect and differentiation it deserves to willful ignorance for the sake of convenience.
Now, I am not asking you to play according to my sensitivities in any group I am not a part of because it doesn't concern me anyway (and it would be really stupid), but assuming we are both part of the same group, what exactly makes your righteous position any more important than mine?

Fun fact: My great-grandfather was shot by a Bavarian policeman because he had the audacity to hold on to a hay cart while sitting on his bicycle and let the cart pull him up a hill. By your logic, I am totally in my rights, to demand that any game doesn't include any Bavarians, policemen (except as brutal villains to defeat) or hay carts.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-11, 08:58 AM
Judging people on their way of playing is very much possible. Passing judgement is not the actual fallacy.

What is fallacious is how people judge others. Most common mistake is that they pass judgement too quickly. You know how they tell you first impressions are vital? Well, it's because people are pretty damn thoughtless, unfair and even cruel when it comes to evaluating other people. One mistaken word or phrase can imprint a deeply negative picture of you into them, and it's surprisingly hard to fix.

... which brings us back to the actual topic. Judging people on your gut feelings may work in some situations, but when you're setting out to play a game, you have to get past your immediate reaction and give the other player a second chance. You can't overreact. You can't jump into conclusions. You can't assume the worst. You can't stand up and leave every single time something you could construe as offensive happens. Because if you do, you won't have a game. And neither might other people; one player less usually impacts fun of everyone at the table far more than any single insensitive joke or game event.

Remember good sportsmanship. Playing is give-and-take; you win some, you lose some. Sometimes you just plain take it up your ass, but keep on smiling so the game can continue, and others can keep having fun. Leave your ideological hang-ups outside the table and discuss them after the game if you really feel pressing need to.

There is a thing called pain treshold: the amount of suffering you are willing or able to put up with to achieve your goal (in this case, to play a roleplaying game). A lot of people in the net lower theirs to absolute minimum, which is all well and good in the wonderworld of the web, but doesn't actually work face-to-face. There is a reason why sore losers are frowned upon. The same goes for people who get offended at every little thing just because they can, or feel entitled to it.

Tl;dr: judging is fine, as long as you base your judgement on reality, not your own arbitrary assumptions. Even more importantly, it's not judging people that makes you evil, it's what you do based on it. Throwing hissy-fits makes me mock you. :smalltongue:

Themrys
2013-10-11, 09:35 AM
By your logic, I am totally in my rights, to demand that any game doesn't include any Bavarians, policemen (except as brutal villains to defeat) or hay carts.

Well, yes, of course you are. Your point being?

You seem to miss my point, though. Policemen obviously don't make you uncomfortable. If it were otherwise, you would not use that as an argument, but be happy that there are people who are willing to respect your police-phobia.

If you tried that in my gaming group, in an attempt to make fun of another player's valid request that some thing or the other won't turn up because it makes them uncomfortable, I'd kick you out. Plain and simple.

Black Jester
2013-10-11, 09:59 AM
Well, yes, of course you are. Your point being?

Maybe you should focus on the actually relevant question and not on the anecdote.
It might be repetitive, but the actual key question is why one player's desire for a light-hearted, idealistic or romanticized game that goes out of his way to avoid certain confrontational topics should be more relevant than another player's desire for a more serious, plausible and less euphemistic game that faces controversies head on? Why should the request to exclude something uncomfortable from the game be any more valid than the request to include the same topic because ignoring it is uncomfortable?

Scow2
2013-10-11, 10:01 AM
Something to keep in mind about when it comes to judging people based on their characters: It's not what they play, but how they play it. Generally, if they go out of their way to play something wrong, they aren't wrong.

A guy who plays pragmatic, acknowledged-as-evil villainous protagonists and GMs that run Evil campaigns (Advertised as such) are probably not bad people. On the other hand, Genocidal Paladins, and people that act reprehensibly while having something other than EVIL (Or, if the character is deliberately prone to extreme action to both ends, Neutral) on their sheet, that is probably more indicative of their personality... but not quite in the case of a Genocidal paladin, because sometimes a monster is just a monster, not a stand-in for a repressed demographic.

Mono Vertigo
2013-10-11, 10:08 AM
To respond to the original question: depends on what you're judging the players on, and how.
(I am also of the opinion you can learn quite a bit about someone by the who and how and why of their roleplaying, the trick is that there's so much to take in account you're almost never going to make accurate judgments. Tons of very different people play the same kinds of characters. Tons of people who have a lot in common play very different characters, and even different game systems altogether.)

The most accurate things you might judge a player on is when they show a fixation on problematic elements, or stuff that the GM hadn't intended to introduce into the game, and that they don't drop the issue when called on it, or do it repeatedly. There are players who insist on turning cooperative games into PVP and hide themselves behind the Great Wall of "But That's What My Character Would DO!" (forgetting conveniently their last 5 chars all tried to turn a normal D&D dungeoncrawl into one of Paranoia that they expected to win). There are players who persist on trying to have sexy funtimes with every NPC they encounter, or can't play a PC of the opposite sex without adding more to the characterization than "nymphomaniac". There are players who believe that having their character enact rape or torture is always okay in any system that's not FATAL The Game That Should Not Be Named* and there's no need to discuss it beforehand with the rest of the group. There are characters who are blatantly playing themselves, down to their name, and refuse the very thought an enemy might kick their ass. There are even worse roleplayers than that.
Those people, you can probably safely judge them based on their roleplaying. Given the judgment you may make about them will result in the conclusion your game will be better if they're kicked off your gaming group, it's fortunate they aren't that numerous.

Other than that? It's difficult to judge someone on their characters. Someone who always rolls a Kender Rogue might do so because they're obnoxious and know it, or because they've got a particular sense of humor that they don't realize is obnoxious, or because they identify best with that character, or because they think they can make that character concept interesting, or because they're too lazy to think up anything else, or... any reason, really. At this point, you'd learn a lot more directly asking them why they play the characters they play, and at this point, you're no longer just judging them on their roleplaying.



TL;DR: generally fallacy, unless they're repeatedly bad about stuff that's not supposed to be a key part of the game. Repetition is an important part of scientific observation such as this.




*Considering to play FATAL The Game That Should Not Be Named** out of anything other than morbid curiosity is a red flag in and of itself.
**Some say that typing that game's name three times in a post will cause the developer's shade to crawl out of the screen and make you roll a character in this system.

Kalmageddon
2013-10-11, 10:12 AM
Maybe you should focus on the actually relevant question and not on the anecdote.
It might be repetitive, but the actual key question is why one player's desire for a light-hearted, idealistic or romanticized game that goes out of his way to avoid certain confrontational topics should be more relevant than another player's desire for a more serious, plausible and less euphemistic game that faces controversies head on? Why should the request to exclude something uncomfortable from the game be any more valid than the request to include the same topic because ignoring it is uncomfortable?

That is actually a pretty good point.

Black Jester
2013-10-11, 10:23 AM
Considering to play FATAL The Game That Should Not Be Named** out of anything other than morbid curiosity is a red flag in and of itself.

I once had a great evening playing FATAL with a bunch of friends for the sake of making fun out of it. We emptied about one bottle of wine per head during that evening and never even managed to complete character creation but it was an incredible fun evening. I mean it is a truly bad game, but that doesn't mean you cannot have a good time with it. Even if that good time consists of pointing at it and laughing.
I actually recommend doing so (just don't combine it with cheap red wine) and try to play FATAL once. Its ineptness is actually hilarious. Don't expect it to be playable, and it is stupid fun.
But if you really want to state a challenge for a GM: start a FATAL group, find players who play it and make it a great gaming experience. Not some sort of drunken revelry like we did, but a real intentionally fun game.

NichG
2013-10-11, 12:20 PM
I don't think that it is a feasible idea to draw a distinct life between 'real life' on the one hand and roleplaying games on the other hand. If you engage in an RPG, it is a part of your real life, just one you spent playing a game. And these games do not take place in vacuum - they are played by real people with real issues, problems, agendas, ideals and so on. And just because it is a hobby doesn't mean it is beyond criticism. Just because you deal with any issue for the purpose of amusement, doesn't mean that you cannot create misgivings or handle the issue inappropriately.

I have argued in the past and will continue to do so, that there is no moral imperative what are good, clean roleplaying topics and which aren't and should be avoided. The important issue is not what you depict in a game, but how you do it. Just to pick up the sexism example, you can have a setting where strong prejudices against certain genders exist, and have a plot about overcoming these obstacles and make it a very satisfying and empowering experience. The attitude towards an issue is often more important than the issue themselves.

For me, this means it is usually a fallacy to judge people on the issues they depict. Because you can handle pretty much any topic with different degrees of respect, differentiation and appropriateness. And in my opinion there is a very large area of different but okay representations about pretty much everything, and usually any misgivings are more likely to be the results of a more superficial regard for the issue, different leanings or just oversights than malicious intents.
For me, there are no taboo topics, but there are forms of handling these topics I am not comfortable with and if it concerns me (because it happens in my group), I am self-righteous enough to mention that.

Because the most important questions are actually not if you can or cannot judge the game by the way it is played; The truly important one is who actually can justifiably form an opinion on the issue and which form this criticism should take. I think this is very hard if not impossible for outsiders who have not experienced the actual game or were directly involved because they at best have a second hand impression of what is actually going on. Roleplaying games are not a public event; they are meant for the people who play it and the report of these events aren't the same thing as actually being there, the same way that listening to a life recording is not the same at being there at the concert.
The form of the criticism is the other issue I consider really relevant. Because it is way too easy to be alarmed, agitated and confrontational and thus provoke not a change but a more rigid and stubborn position and thus achieve nothing. It is basically wasting effort on a discussion which only knows losers. Nothing is achieved, nothing is changed, you have an argument, and everybody is both angry and feels more self-righteous about his position. Good criticism should be differentiated, mostly constructive, well informed and most importantly calm and fair.

Now, this is probably more idealistic than realistic to expect that any of this issues will be discussed calm, civilized or factual, because if it is relevant enough to anybody to provoke such a discussion, it is highly unlikely that this is not a passionate topic after all.But at least one can try, right?

I wanted to trim this down to discuss it in a more focused fashion, but there are a number of good points distributed throughout so I'm going to leave it entire rather than risk changing the meaning.

From what I've seen in this thread so far, there's basically two issues being discussed as if they were interchangeable. One is 'is it possible to accurately evaluate a person's nature based on interacting with them in a roleplaying game?'. Its very easy to be convinced you've made an accurate analysis that is just a projection or mistake, but I do think that this is possible in the long term, etc.

The other issue is something like 'is it okay to use this analysis to issue ultimatums or ostracize other players/DM based on what you discover?'. Whereas the first issue relates to the ability to extract accurate information from something that by its nature tends to obscure it, the second is very charged with personal morality 'is it right to judge people?' and such.

I would strongly say that in the second case, it is almost without exception bad in a social gathering like a tabletop game to try to place ultimatums on others to change the way they play.

Let me be clear though - there is a difference between an ultimatum and a request. 'This makes me uncomfortable, please don't do it' is a request; its healthy communication. It is of course reasonable to ask people to take your discomfort into account and make them aware of it (they may not have been). But you also accept that if your request can't be met for some reason, you may end up having to make the mature choice to walk away from the table with no hard feelings (e.g. the pacifist offended at violence who wants to join a D&D hack and slash dungeoncrawl). Or that you may have to meet the group halfway on things.

To say 'this makes me uncomfortable, and if you don't change what you're doing then you're a bad human being' is an ultimatum. At the core it has the same structure as the request, but it comes with the implicit idea that you have the right to pass some form of absolute judgement on the others in the group.

Passing ultimatums on each other is not conducive to keeping things friendly at a table.

There's also the question of whether or not just because you can evaluate someone you should actually try to. This is something that has a very individual answer. Some people can deal with the fact that other people around them hold views that are odious to them, and others get outraged at the idea of it. If you're the kind of person to get outraged easily, its better not to know - tabletop games aside, its hard to go through life assigning half of everyone you meet to the 'horrible person who should be avoided' column.

Morithias
2013-10-11, 01:56 PM
Something to keep in mind about when it comes to judging people based on their characters: It's not what they play, but how they play it. Generally, if they go out of their way to play something wrong, they aren't wrong.

A guy who plays pragmatic, acknowledged-as-evil villainous protagonists and GMs that run Evil campaigns (Advertised as such) are probably not bad people. On the other hand, Genocidal Paladins, and people that act reprehensibly while having something other than EVIL (Or, if the character is deliberately prone to extreme action to both ends, Neutral) on their sheet, that is probably more indicative of their personality... but not quite in the case of a Genocidal paladin, because sometimes a monster is just a monster, not a stand-in for a repressed demographic.

Most of the campaigns my Skype group runs are evil games.

Why?

BECAUSE WE'RE SICK OF PLAYING THE HERO.

EVERY. other medium. 99% of the protagonists are heroes.

And in video-games it is the worse...

Your game has a "morality bar" and advertises that you can play evil? Guess what? I can basically guarantee you that this evil, will be stupid, petty, evil right out of bad dastardly whiplash short film from the 30's. The "good/paragon" option to the reporter asking you about you doing something violent and possibly unjust earlier, is to talk to her calmly and try to convince her she's wrong. The "Evil/renegade" option is deck her across the face on live television, because that TOTALLY won't prove her point.

As for games that actually let you play the villain with the purpose of playing the villain? Something like GTA? Or Overlord? Go play those games again and see who the final bosses are...bet you almost anything they're other corrupt/evil people. News flash game/campaign designers. I don't play villains so I can save the planet from an eldirch abomination/zombie apocalypse/crime boss, I play villains so I can FIGHT THE HEROES.

I can literally get my hero fix basically anywhere. 90% of the games on this very site, are hero games. I can go on steam and download about 9-10 free-to-play mmorpgs where I play a hero.

What's the most recent game that I've played where I played the villain and was satisfied with the plot and enemies? Oh right. Evil Genius, released in 2004! It's been almost a DECADE and this game hasn't been topped in terms of "fight the heroes, summon evil minions, take over the planet." gameplay, which is SAD.

I play evil campaigns, not because I am evil, but because I am SICK of playing the hero. I am SICK of saving the princess, and I am SICK of saving the world. I want to conquest it for once!

Sometimes you just want something new, and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

kyoryu
2013-10-11, 02:25 PM
I think you can absolutely get information on people from how they play.

I also think it's very important for a group to reach some level of understanding of what will or will not be in their game. That generally includes some measure of tolerance, and some measure of accommodation, from all involved parties. I do raise an eyebrow at those who expect others to accommodate them, but show no tolerance/willingness to accommodate themselves.

I don't think that the inability of a group to reach that consensus is an indication that any of the people involved are evil or bad people. Sometimes the goals and desires of the people involved are just too far removed from each other for a meaningful compromise to be reached.

The Oni
2013-10-11, 03:54 PM
FATAL
FATAL
FATAL

*looks around uneasily*

Mono Vertigo
2013-10-12, 05:56 AM
I once had a great evening playing FATAL with a bunch of friends for the sake of making fun out of it. We emptied about one bottle of wine per head during that evening and never even managed to complete character creation but it was an incredible fun evening. I mean it is a truly bad game, but that doesn't mean you cannot have a good time with it. Even if that good time consists of pointing at it and laughing.
I actually recommend doing so (just don't combine it with cheap red wine) and try to play FATAL once. Its ineptness is actually hilarious. Don't expect it to be playable, and it is stupid fun.
But if you really want to state a challenge for a GM: start a FATAL group, find players who play it and make it a great gaming experience. Not some sort of drunken revelry like we did, but a real intentionally fun game.
I'll count it as morbid curiosity, and good on you for managing to have a fun time with it!

FATAL
FATAL
FATAL

*looks around uneasily*

If you ever find yourself rolling for the circumference of stuff that should never be rolled, you can't say I didn't warn you.

Sith_Happens
2013-10-12, 05:58 AM
FATAL
FATAL
FATAL

*looks around uneasily*

Don't worry, nothing's going to happen, you didn't say it in front of the mirror of a darkened strip club bathroom while rolling 4d100.

Karkos
2013-10-12, 11:27 AM
I think playing atleast weekly sessions for an extended period of time (6 months to 1 year) you definitely start to learn things about the psychological makeup of the other players. Moreso being actually in their physical presence than playing over Skype.

For instance I always play characters that I can relate to (usually human) and have characteristics that I myself strive for (usually martial classes). Just because I'm shortly about to graduate mortuary college everyone assumes I want to play a necromancer :smallbiggrin:

Male players that always play female characters worry me. Not that I think they're gay (some certainly are in the closet), but they have mommy issues or secretly want to be dominated by powerful women. Luckily when I was a DM (a decade ago) I never ran into this with my group, but if a player was gay I would just tell them to play a gay character of the same sex as they are.

I find in actual table group that players that are normally quiet will remain that way (unless alcohol is involved) and loud/boisterous players will remain as they are. Playing over Skype things can obviously be reversed.

That's my armchair psychology for whatever little it's worth.

SowZ
2013-10-12, 11:40 AM
Most of the campaigns my Skype group runs are evil games.

Why?

BECAUSE WE'RE SICK OF PLAYING THE HERO.

EVERY. other medium. 99% of the protagonists are heroes.

And in video-games it is the worse...

Your game has a "morality bar" and advertises that you can play evil? Guess what? I can basically guarantee you that this evil, will be stupid, petty, evil right out of bad dastardly whiplash short film from the 30's. The "good/paragon" option to the reporter asking you about you doing something violent and possibly unjust earlier, is to talk to her calmly and try to convince her she's wrong. The "Evil/renegade" option is deck her across the face on live television, because that TOTALLY won't prove her point.

As for games that actually let you play the villain with the purpose of playing the villain? Something like GTA? Or Overlord? Go play those games again and see who the final bosses are...bet you almost anything they're other corrupt/evil people. News flash game/campaign designers. I don't play villains so I can save the planet from an eldirch abomination/zombie apocalypse/crime boss, I play villains so I can FIGHT THE HEROES.

I can literally get my hero fix basically anywhere. 90% of the games on this very site, are hero games. I can go on steam and download about 9-10 free-to-play mmorpgs where I play a hero.

What's the most recent game that I've played where I played the villain and was satisfied with the plot and enemies? Oh right. Evil Genius, released in 2004! It's been almost a DECADE and this game hasn't been topped in terms of "fight the heroes, summon evil minions, take over the planet." gameplay, which is SAD.

I play evil campaigns, not because I am evil, but because I am SICK of playing the hero. I am SICK of saving the princess, and I am SICK of saving the world. I want to conquest it for once!

Sometimes you just want something new, and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I don't know if that's a totally fair comparison. Renegade/paragon is more like lawful/chaotic then good/evil. I personally agree with most main renegade choices in the game.

Urpriest
2013-10-12, 03:14 PM
Male players that always play female characters worry me. Not that I think they're gay (some certainly are in the closet), but they have mommy issues or secretly want to be dominated by powerful women. Luckily when I was a DM (a decade ago) I never ran into this with my group, but if a player was gay I would just tell them to play a gay character of the same sex as they are.


Huh. I feel like I wouldn't expect subby folks to generally be interested in playing the opposite gender. Is this just something you're guessing at, or are there actual experiences backing it up?

In my experience, guys who regularly play female characters often do it for the aesthetics. They want a character who looks a certain way in combat, and a female character works well for that particular look.

Subaru Kujo
2013-10-12, 03:53 PM
Huh. I feel like I wouldn't expect subby folks to generally be interested in playing the opposite gender. Is this just something you're guessing at, or are there actual experiences backing it up?

In my experience, guys who regularly play female characters often do it for the aesthetics. They want a character who looks a certain way in combat, and a female character works well for that particular look.

I just do my best to switch it up every so often. Try to keep a 1:1 ratio on male/female characters on my end.

JusticeZero
2013-10-12, 04:09 PM
Alternately?
I play a lot of female characters. One reason is that I understand women a bit better because, well, I look at, pay attention to, and try to learn more about women. I have no interest in learning how men think. I don't have any real reason to. Learning how to better understand the group of people that I wanted to spend time with was much more interesting.

Black Jester
2013-10-12, 04:10 PM
I admit I don't like people playing cross-gender characters, because I tend to mix up personal pronouns and that makes me feel stupid and angry at myself. Otherwise, if any one in a game is supposed to play the role of an utterly non-human entity (not that rare in a fantasy game), I personally would like that gender should matter a lot less than the fact that one character is an ordinary human, the other one a nigh immortal being that will live long enough to see the next three or four centuries and the next one might be a living automaton.

Mr Beer
2013-10-12, 05:13 PM
The main thing I'm taking away from this thread is that I want to game with Black Jester. Red wine and realistic villains, what's not to like?

Black Jester
2013-10-13, 02:52 AM
Carefully; since two years ago, a more or less professional mead producer and retailer has joined our group an several occasions, we have pretty much given up on the red wine. What we have almost always is cake, since roleplaying games without self-made pastry is a waste of time.

The Oni
2013-10-13, 03:05 AM
I avoid playing female characters in tabletop games because it tends to make people uncomfortable. Once, I made a half-Orc ranger with badass tattoo-scars who used the heaviest crossbow she could lift, but no one would take the character seriously, and just kept making jokes about how half-orc females got -8 to CHA. So my characters are usually dudes (it's for the best, I can do their voices better that way :smallbiggrin:).

On the other hand, I rather enjoy making female characters in RPG games, especially BioWare RPGs. My run through Mass Effect was a femshep Renegon Infiltrator and she was superbadass.

Evandar
2013-10-13, 03:52 AM
The only thing I've ever been able to gauge from how people played their characters has been how well they understood drama, the flow of a story and their consideration of other people. My friend Mark is constantly playing an Evil rogue in a Good party and has managed to avoid screwing the party up. He just actively tries to find ways to avoid doing Evil things that are going to mess with the story and pacing.

Conversely, one of our other players would frequently mess up well-laid plans (with good and Good intentions). I'm not sure what else you can reliably draw from them.

A player or DM being extremely creepy because he's actually creepy should seem pretty different from one who is doing so for the sake of the story.

Ifni
2013-10-13, 04:50 AM
Maybe you should focus on the actually relevant question and not on the anecdote.
It might be repetitive, but the actual key question is why one player's desire for a light-hearted, idealistic or romanticized game that goes out of his way to avoid certain confrontational topics should be more relevant than another player's desire for a more serious, plausible and less euphemistic game that faces controversies head on? Why should the request to exclude something uncomfortable from the game be any more valid than the request to include the same topic because ignoring it is uncomfortable?

I can't speak for Themrys, but I've pretty much agreed with their position on this thread. My answer would go something like this:
-Does including the confrontational topic in the game make it uncomfortable enough for the player in question that they're not having fun anymore?
-Does leaving the confrontational topic out of the game make it uncomfortable enough for you that you're not having fun anymore?

If the answer to both of these questions is "yes" - e.g. if a female player strongly doesn't want to deal with sexism in her RPGs, and the GM strongly doesn't want to remove sexism from their campaign - then my general answer would be "you should probably agree to disagree on this one and not play together in this particular game".

But if the answer to one is "yes" and the other is "no", then the priority should be to ensure that everyone can enjoy the game, not to figure out who is "right". That's (I think) why Themrys gave some examples of prejudices that (in their group) would be unlikely to actually make the game un-fun for people. The issue isn't whether the male character who thinks women are idiots is more sexist than the female character who thinks men are idiots. The issue is whether any of the players at that particular table are made uncomfortable by these characters. My reading of Themrys' comment was that Themrys might be made uncomfortable with said male character, but that they didn't think anyone in their group would be offended by the female equivalent, so they would suggest that as a possible alternative if the player just wanted to play a bigot. Of course, if one of the other players then said, "Actually, this character makes me really uncomfortable", they would not use that particular suggestion.

Critiquing whether someone should be uncomfortable is missing the point. Telling someone 'this is trivial, it should not make you uncomfortable, grow a thicker skin' is not likely to make them any less uncomfortable, or resolve the problem that they're not having fun with the game. Coming from a player or GM in the game, it's pretty much completely unhelpful - unless, of course, you don't care about whether your fellow player (and presumed friend) is actually enjoying themselves, and just want to make them feel bad about themselves, in which case you are in fact being kind of a jerk.

For another example (and one similar to an issue that came up in a PbP game I play in, on these boards), since people seem to get so defensive about sexism - suppose you have a campaign in which one of the NPCs is a kid dying of a magical incurable wasting disease. This is "realistic", in that IRL kids do get horrible diseases for which we have no good cure. But if one of the players comes to you after the session where you introduce this NPC and says "Look, my little sister's just been diagnosed with leukemia, I really really do not want to think about this in my gaming time, can you please have the NPC get miraculously cured by a visiting high-level cleric and then never show up again?" - then if you insist on keeping your Kid With Cancer NPC when they're not essential to the game, you are not being a good friend, or a good GM.

If they are essential to the game and the entire plot was going to be about Curing Magical Cancer, then you may want to explain this to the player, and suggest that perhaps they sit this one out. Or you may want to come up with a different campaign premise.

And if the player comes to you and just says "Look, I really really do not want to think about cancer in my gaming time, can you please have the NPC get miraculously cured by a visiting high-level cleric and then never show up again?", without giving a reason why (say, because they do not particularly want to share personal griefs with their gaming group) - then the right answer is not "explain to me why I should". If they feel that strongly about it, they probably have a good reason. My feeling is that you should extend to your fellow players the presumption of good faith - that they're telling the truth when they say something is a problem for them - and work from that point, rather than trying to figure out whether they have a good enough reason (by your standards) to be hurt.

--------------------

As others have said, I think I can judge people pretty well by how they roleplay, which does not mean just looking at the characters they play :smallwink:

I have an awesome GM for one PbP game who writes amazing NPCs, whose twists I can barely keep up with, and who has managed to delve into some pretty dark topics while being respectful of everyone's sensitivities (via spoiler blocks, trigger warnings, and asking all the people involved in advance). The NPCs who are on our side include a professional blackmailer and slave-trader who sells children to entities that eat their souls, and two people who had hit the group with very-difficult-to-resist mind control within five minutes of meeting them. (Really, these are good guys. They may not have the PCs' best interests at heart, but they're trying to save the world. The bad guys want to destroy everything that lives.)

We also play several PbP games together. In one, he's playing the innocent good-hearted country boy thrown into a world he can barely understand - and in another one he's playing a smooth, pragmatic, profit-is-everything businessman, and in a third, he's more or less playing Mengele.

None of these games have changed in the slightest the opinion I had from playing with him as a GM, which is that he's smart, respectful of other people, an amazing writer, and someone I would be happy to have as a RL friend.

There are, otoh, people I've played with in PbP games who I never want to interact with again. Mostly that comes from OOC discussions, but some of it has been directly IC - e.g. the guy who wrote his barbarian climbing into the bed of my 15-year-old female sorcerer (think Harry-Potter-ish magical child prodigy) on the party's first night together, without ever checking with me whether this was something I was okay with. (I wasn't okay with it; I quit the game.) I think from that RP action I can accurately judge that the player was either incredibly clueless or didn't care much about other people's comfort zones; either way, not someone I wanted to spend virtual time with.

Likewise, from PbP games I can judge people's writing skills pretty well, as well as some combination of their creativity, their intelligence, and their willingness to invest time in RP - there are people who get into every game they apply for on these boards, and there's a reason for that. (Of course, someone who writes terribly online and comes up with the most cursory backstories may actually be a professional writer who just isn't putting much time into online gaming - that's what I mean when I say I can judge a combination of those three factors, not the individual ones. But someone who writes excellent posts and awesome engaging characters is usually someone who's done a fair bit of reading and is pretty creative, at the least - it's hard to fake those skills.)

Themrys
2013-10-13, 05:41 AM
I can't speak for Themrys, but I've pretty much agreed with their position on this thread. My answer would go something like this:
-Does including the confrontational topic in the game make it uncomfortable enough for the player in question that they're not having fun anymore?
-Does leaving the confrontational topic out of the game make it uncomfortable enough for you that you're not having fun anymore?

If the answer to both of these questions is "yes" - e.g. if a female player strongly doesn't want to deal with sexism in her RPGs, and the GM strongly doesn't want to remove sexism from their campaign - then my general answer would be "you should probably agree to disagree on this one and not play together in this particular game".

But if the answer to one is "yes" and the other is "no", then the priority should be to ensure that everyone can enjoy the game, not to figure out who is "right". That's (I think) why Themrys gave some examples of prejudices that (in their group) would be unlikely to actually make the game un-fun for people. The issue isn't whether the male character who thinks women are idiots is more sexist than the female character who thinks men are idiots. The issue is whether any of the players at that particular table are made uncomfortable by these characters. My reading of Themrys' comment was that Themrys might be made uncomfortable with said male character, but that they didn't think anyone in their group would be offended by the female equivalent, so they would suggest that as a possible alternative if the player just wanted to play a bigot. Of course, if one of the other players then said, "Actually, this character makes me really uncomfortable", they would not use that particular suggestion.

Critiquing whether someone should be uncomfortable is missing the point. Telling someone 'this is trivial, it should not make you uncomfortable, grow a thicker skin' is not likely to make them any less uncomfortable, or resolve the problem that they're not having fun with the game. Coming from a player or GM in the game, it's pretty much completely unhelpful - unless, of course, you don't care about whether your fellow player (and presumed friend) is actually enjoying themselves, and just want to make them feel bad about themselves, in which case you are in fact being kind of a jerk.

For another example (and one similar to an issue that came up in a PbP game I play in, on these boards), since people seem to get so defensive about sexism - suppose you have a campaign in which one of the NPCs is a kid dying of a magical incurable wasting disease. This is "realistic", in that IRL kids do get horrible diseases for which we have no good cure. But if one of the players comes to you after the session where you introduce this NPC and says "Look, my little sister's just been diagnosed with leukemia, I really really do not want to think about this in my gaming time, can you please have the NPC get miraculously cured by a visiting high-level cleric and then never show up again?" - then if you insist on keeping your Kid With Cancer NPC when they're not essential to the game, you are not being a good friend, or a good GM.

If they are essential to the game and the entire plot was going to be about Curing Magical Cancer, then you may want to explain this to the player, and suggest that perhaps they sit this one out. Or you may want to come up with a different campaign premise.

And if the player comes to you and just says "Look, I really really do not want to think about cancer in my gaming time, can you please have the NPC get miraculously cured by a visiting high-level cleric and then never show up again?", without giving a reason why (say, because they do not particularly want to share personal griefs with their gaming group) - then the right answer is not "explain to me why I should". If they feel that strongly about it, they probably have a good reason. My feeling is that you should extend to your fellow players the presumption of good faith - that they're telling the truth when they say something is a problem for them - and work from that point, rather than trying to figure out whether they have a good enough reason (by your standards) to be hurt.

Thanks for explaining what I meant ... I thought I had made it clear enough, but seemingly, some people still manage to misunderstand me.

I also agree that one should not insist on explanations - the best reasons to feel uncomfortable with something are usually the ones one wouldn't want to have to explain.





There are, otoh, people I've played with in PbP games who I never want to interact with again. Mostly that comes from OOC discussions, but some of it has been directly IC - e.g. the guy who wrote his barbarian climbing into the bed of my 15-year-old female sorcerer (think Harry-Potter-ish magical child prodigy) on the party's first night together, without ever checking with me whether this was something I was okay with. (I wasn't okay with it; I quit the game.) I think from that RP action I can accurately judge that the player was either incredibly clueless or didn't care much about other people's comfort zones; either way, not someone I wanted to spend virtual time with.


You mean he didn't have his barbarian climb there to hide from bounty hunters, or for a similar "harmless" reason, but with exactly the intent the wording implies? :smalleek:
(Benefit of doubt and all, the beds in "Harry Potter" would be very good for hiding. :smallcool:)

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-13, 07:38 AM
"Look, I really really do not want to think about cancer in my gaming time, can you please have the NPC get miraculously cured by a visiting high-level cleric and then never show up again?"

The problem here is that some of us have difficulties understanding why someone would even ask something like this, and it's not because we haven't had bad or uncomfortable things happen to us. There are a lot of things that would make me frown or even cry, but I don't ask anyone to avoid them or remove them from a game; in fact, I've gone out of my way to add them to a game myself. This includes such funny things as car crashes, loss of friendship, romantic rejection, chronic depression, suicide, death of close family members, maternal abuse, getting fired, so on and so forth. Analysis and examination of things that trouble me are one of the things I use RPGs for. If someone else introduces an element close to my heart to a narrative, I'm more likely to ignore it or focus on it in the game rather than reject it or get upset about it.

Same goes when I'm a GM. If someone lacks tact (etc.), I'm morely likely to mock them, than actually stop them. I roll with the blows - if my players want to make fools of themselves or their characters, by God they are free to do so. And because of this, for me, the question in case of an upset player always becomes "why can't s/he do the same?".

Karkos
2013-10-13, 07:51 AM
I just do my best to switch it up every so often. Try to keep a 1:1 ratio on male/female characters on my end.

I said male players that ALWAYS play female characters. You're fine.

Female PC's are not my personal taste because I can't relate to them as well. Plus it can lead to some really awkward situations.

Karkos
2013-10-13, 08:01 AM
Huh. I feel like I wouldn't expect subby folks to generally be interested in playing the opposite gender. Is this just something you're guessing at, or are there actual experiences backing it up?

In my experience, guys who regularly play female characters often do it for the aesthetics. They want a character who looks a certain way in combat, and a female character works well for that particular look.

Just my ignorant armchair psychology. Add a deep fear and/or lack of understanding of women to the list of male gamers that ALWAYS play female PCs.

JusticeZero
2013-10-13, 08:03 AM
Well, I have issues with alcohol in games (and out of games, too). Of course, the issue is that it can be really hard to explain the quirky boundaries of things that will make me squirm, abruptly stand up, and leave - particularly without gushing over personal history in ways that I rarely manage to do with a psychiatrist. So I end up getting really uncomfortable and making bizarre requests to avoid squickitude any time someone decides to for some strange reason request that our characters drink a lot of liquor, which for some reason is actually a lot more common than you would expect. It really is hard to explain this to a table full of people who think that flirting with nearly lethal doses of poison is the normal and expected way to spend a weekend.

Nonetheless, there are some things that everyone else would consider innocuous that will make me stand up and walk out of a game. I do my best to let the GM work around it. If I have to put up with mockery instead, I won't be back, and i'll probably end up stealing your players because people are going to hear about this, and I wanted to game with these people. Probably in that time slot too.

Seriously. I don't owe you a gruesome and private story as payment for you not to be a jerk. Not being a jerk is its own reward.

JusticeZero
2013-10-13, 08:06 AM
Just my ignorant armchair psychology. Add a deep fear and/or lack of understanding of women to the list of male gamers that ALWAYS play female PCs.
As opposed to people like me, who play female PCs because we relate well to women, because we don't have much reason to watch how men behave and what they like?

Karkos
2013-10-13, 08:18 AM
As opposed to people like me, who play female PCs because we relate well to women, because we don't have much reason to watch how men behave and what they like?

Like I said, just my ignorant opinion. Take it for what little it's worth :smallwink:

Karkos
2013-10-13, 08:26 AM
Well, I have issues with alcohol in games (and out of games, too). Of course, the issue is that it can be really hard to explain the quirky boundaries of things that will make me squirm, abruptly stand up, and leave - particularly without gushing over personal history in ways that I rarely manage to do with a psychiatrist. So I end up getting really uncomfortable and making bizarre requests to avoid squickitude any time someone decides to for some strange reason request that our characters drink a lot of liquor, which for some reason is actually a lot more common than you would expect. It really is hard to explain this to a table full of people who think that flirting with nearly lethal doses of poison is the normal and expected way to spend a weekend.

Nonetheless, there are some things that everyone else would consider innocuous that will make me stand up and walk out of a game. I do my best to let the GM work around it. If I have to put up with mockery instead, I won't be back, and i'll probably end up stealing your players because people are going to hear about this, and I wanted to game with these people. Probably in that time slot too.

Seriously. I don't owe you a gruesome and private story as payment for you not to be a jerk. Not being a jerk is its own reward.

QFT

If a group is drinking liquor I'm out. Years ago I used to be a hardcore alcoholic, and I'm never going back.

Of course this mainly applies to actual physical table groups. After I graduate and get licensed I plan on becoming strictly a Skype gamer (something I've never done). Sure, I may drink a couple beers to help me loosen up around complete strangers, but once I know them better I doubt that will continue.

Zerter
2013-10-13, 08:32 AM
Actually, I think you can tell quite a lot. I have played with the same group of people over a number of years, and you can see recurring ways in the way people play.

One guy never accepts authority and reacts strongly to anything resembling it. He always plays Chaotic one-trick-ponies that form no real relationship with anything, be it institutions or characters. In general he is very relaxed about anything that happens.

One guy plays straightforward characters that have a supporting role, he sometimes tries to break out of the role but returns to form quickly. He also interprets the rules and morality a certain way, his way, and has no flexibility in this whatsoever. He generally keeps to the background.

One guy plays a broader category of escapist characters. By this I mean they represent some kind of cliche fantasy. He sticks to the character closely until he gets bored with it and tries to get it killed somehow, not admitting he is. He also cheats, not really caring when he gets caught. He tries out stuff other people don't think off and is very friendly.

I play a broad range of characters, but ultimately they have certain things in common. They all try to lead and they all try to build something, be it a empire, a religion, a major work of art or a city. They all generally play it safe, plan a lot and have contingincies for their contingincies. I am accepting of a lot of stuff, but I can get in conflicts when I perceive someone as breaking their word.

I can easily see how you could reach certain conclusions about our personalities using these descriptions.

Themrys
2013-10-13, 08:41 AM
The problem here is that some of us have difficulties understanding why someone would even ask something like this, and it's not because we haven't had bad or uncomfortable things happen to us.

People are different. Some want to confront things that made them unhappy in the past, and still make them unhappy, and some don't.
Just because you would be comfortable with a cancer patient in your RPG while a friend of yours is dying of cancer doesn't mean everyone is or has to be.

Besides, the problem with -isms is that, most of the time, you can not be sure whether it's really all just in the game.
You never meet people who sell children's souls do demons in real life, so the danger that the player (or GM) who plays such a character uses the opportunity to voice his real beliefs, is zero. It's just over-the-top-evilness, and you know that the others know and acknowledge that this character is evil.

Likewise, a GM who includes car crashes in a game certainly thinks that car crashes are bad. You do not sit there, uncomfortably, and wonder whether the GM thinks you deserved that car crash you experienced and car crashes should happen more often in real life.
Or whether he, despite his assertions that he thinks car crashes are bad, still thinks they unavoidably must happen to people like you, but it just wouldn't be natural if they happened to people like him.


@JusticeZero: Ah, alcohol. It is, indeed, surprising how often rpg characters drink lots of alcohol. I can easily see how uncomfortable a reenactment of real life social pressure must be for someone who has had bad experiences with that, or just with alcohol itself. (I exclusively experience pressure of that sort in rpgs, so it was never a problem for me, but now that I think about it ... I can't count the times my characters were pressured into drinking alcohol.)

Tengu_temp
2013-10-13, 08:50 AM
Without reading the whole thread:

Talk to them. All you need to do is find out exactly why the DM/player uses the thing that irks you. A quick talk is almost always enough to figure out their reason, and sometimes you don't even have to do even that because they make their intentions blatantly obvious from the get-go.

And when you know their reasons? Yes, it's totally okay to judge them.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-13, 09:13 AM
Likewise, a GM who includes car crashes in a game certainly thinks that car crashes are bad. You do not sit there, uncomfortably, and wonder whether the GM thinks you deserved that car crash you experienced and car crashes should happen more often in real life.

Yeah, but some players (suprisingly easily) get convinced that a GM putting their character through some kind of disaster (in this case, a car crash) is somehow evidence that the GM is out to get them, the player. I've seen it seriously argued in these forums that a character should not be put through any sort of negative experience without explicit permission from the player. (In context of some systems/games this would be a valid argument. In context of D&D where it was displayed... not so much.)

"[Player Y] thinks [Negative thing X] is a-okay in real life" is not the only fallacious conclusion a judgemental person might draw. "[Player Y] subjecting my character to [Negative thing X] is a sign he's out to get me!" is just as possible, and just as harmful to a group.

Themrys
2013-10-13, 09:40 AM
Yeah, but some players (suprisingly easily) get convinced that a GM putting their character through some kind of disaster (in this case, a car crash) is somehow evidence that the GM is out to get them, the player. I've seen it seriously argued in these forums that a character should not be put through any sort of negative experience without explicit permission from the player. (In context of some systems/games this would be a valid argument. In context of D&D where it was displayed... not so much.)

If a player is so easily convinced that the GM is out to get them, even without there being an established pattern of discrimination of people like the player by people like the GM, then I suspect that there has been some conflict between them before that and there is reason to believe that the GM is, indeed, out to get them. Or maybe the player is a bit paranoid.

Either way, the problem is most easily solved by respecting the player's request, as long as they act mature and don't, for example, have the character with the no-death-guarantee act as if immortal ingame.

Of course, such an easy solution is only possible if the GM is actually neutral, and really only had the bad things happen to the character so that the player would have fun solving the resulting problems.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-13, 11:27 AM
Somewhat ironically, the argument usually crops up in context of random encounters - that is, in cases where the GM is surrendering some of his power to dice and random chance. As random encounters are often crafted to rules of RPGs and published scenarios, the players are actually faulting the GM for following rules of the game.

So it's not really about the GM being against the players. In fact, if the GM is being neutral, he can still be faulted for it; what this kind of argument usually stems from is an attitude that the GM should be for the players.

Again, valid argument in context of some games. Not as much in case of D&D and derivatives, where the GM was originally supposed to be a neutral arbiter, and the thought that GM exists to support the story of the players (or himself, for that matter), even through fudging and railroading, was introduced in later editions (AD&D 2nd edition onwards, mostly). Completely invalid in case of some games where the GM is explicitly adversarial towards the player (yes, these exist).

NichG
2013-10-13, 12:35 PM
Nonetheless, there are some things that everyone else would consider innocuous that will make me stand up and walk out of a game. I do my best to let the GM work around it. If I have to put up with mockery instead, I won't be back, and i'll probably end up stealing your players because people are going to hear about this, and I wanted to game with these people. Probably in that time slot too.

Seriously. I don't owe you a gruesome and private story as payment for you not to be a jerk. Not being a jerk is its own reward.

It is of course your right to leave a game whose content squicks you out, but I think its pretty much being a jerk to join a game, decide its not the game for you, and then use that as an excuse to poach players into another game during the same timeslot.

Black Jester
2013-10-13, 01:34 PM
-Does including the confrontational topic in the game make it uncomfortable enough for the player in question that they're not having fun anymore?
-Does leaving the confrontational topic out of the game make it uncomfortable enough for you that you're not having fun anymore?

the problem with this is, you are basically starting the discomfort Olympics. Whoever can look the most distressed wins. This is basically a shouting match, because you cannot quantify the level of fun or 'un-fun' of a game, which basically means whoever is the loudest wins and the more tolerable you are, the less your opinion matters. I am not sure if I can offer a better alternative here, but I don't think this is a particularly good way to solve any issue, especially if one party claims a moral high ground and thus implies ignorance or malicious intent for whoever disagrees. And this is were this whole issue of judging other players on content is so polarizing.


If the answer to both of these questions is "yes" - e.g. if a female player strongly doesn't want to deal with sexism in her RPGs, and the GM strongly doesn't want to remove sexism from their campaign - then my general answer would be "you should probably agree to disagree on this one and not play together in this particular game".

If it doesn't work out and everybody wants to be stubborn, yes, that might be the only option. However, I personally think that demanding someone else should leave the group or be kicked out is almost always in bad form. There are exceptions of course, especially if you go to the lengths of introducing rather extreme examples.


But if the answer to one is "yes" and the other is "no", then the priority should be to ensure that everyone can enjoy the game, not to figure out who is "right". That's (I think) why Themrys gave some examples of prejudices that (in their group) would be unlikely to actually make the game un-fun for people.

But the matter is almost never as black and white as this.Normally it is not a question of simply yes or no, it is a measure of relative values, varying degrees, and so on. The implication that this is just two options is grossly oversimplifying. Most of the time in my experience, the issue is not about extremes and people who are so out of place that either they go or you go and everybody within the group is either on one side or the other - that is not how these things work. Most of the times, you have various degrees of different opinions and different ways to solve the issue. Likewise, discomfort about certain issues cannot be reduced to just the question of "Are you offended? yes/no". You might have someone who is against the inclusion or exclusion of one matter or the other, but the whole issue isn't important enough to that person to raise an argument about it; others might just be indifferent and are pulled to one side or the other because of personal connections to the people involved and so on. That's the problem with shouting matches like this: they tend to level any differentiation or more ambivalent positions.
I think that inflexibility and stubbornness in question like this is not a sign of strong principles but of narrow-mindedness. Yes, there are extremes which makes a compromise really unlikely or impossible, but those are a rare exception, not the norm. And that's why the discussion of extreme examples aren't helpful, because the solution in a truly extreme situation is rather simple: just don't play. But that doesn't help you at all to come up with a viable solution with the much more common and both more muddled and and usually not that extreme , because in real life, there are no magic issues that will turn a great game into a horrible one just for their inclusion. In real life, if you have a truly great game, there is some margin of error and tolerance which means, yes, there can be misgivings, but you should ask yourself if they are relevant enough to overshadow the good parts of the game.


The issue isn't whether the male character who thinks women are idiots is more sexist than the female character who thinks men are idiots. The issue is whether any of the players at that particular table are made uncomfortable by these characters. My reading of Themrys' comment was that Themrys might be made uncomfortable with said male character, but that they didn't think anyone in their group would be offended by the female equivalent, so they would suggest that as a possible alternative if the player just wanted to play a bigot. Of course, if one of the other players then said, "Actually, this character makes me really uncomfortable", they would not use that particular suggestion.

And when I tell you honestly that the omission of one issue or the other makes me really uncomfortable, because it feels like its trivializing the issue (and because Utopia is contrived and boring)? You are back to the shouting matches.
Perhaps I am slow today (it's Sunday after all), but I still haven't found why this one particular form of concern is somehow more relevant than the other.
And personally I for my part feel that if I am a player, any other player who is not the gamemaster who is telling me how I should or could play my character is clearly overstepping some boundaries and the message I would probably receive seems highly presumptuous and patronizing, and the gut reaction would very likely to decline this suggestion.


Critiquing whether someone should be uncomfortable is missing the point. Telling someone 'this is trivial, it should not make you uncomfortable, grow a thicker skin' is not likely to make them any less uncomfortable, or resolve the problem that they're not having fun with the game. Coming from a player or GM in the game, it's pretty much completely unhelpful - unless, of course, you don't care about whether your fellow player (and presumed friend) is actually enjoying themselves, and just want to make them feel bad about themselves, in which case you are in fact being kind of a jerk.

Exactly. But why do you think it is any way more effective if it works the other way around? What makes you think that telling anybody that a matter they consider as not that important within the context of a game or not even as applying here anyway (also known as "is the depiction of Orcs as evil necessarily racist?") and that therefore the game needs to be adjusted to avoid controversy is any more effective?
The only way i can see to find a solution to this dilemma that doesn't include "it's either my way or I quit" is the promise to try to handle any issue with the necessary care and respect for the issue. No censorship, no euphemisms, no disrespect, and keeping everything in good taste. Does that always work? No of course not. People are people and people make mistakes. Sometimes someone is just inattentive or a joke comes out a lot less funny than intended and sometimes, people are a bit ignorant, not because they have some nefarious purpose or trying to offend, but because it just didn't seem like such a big issue. That's a point where constructive criticism and patience brings you a lot further than outrage.


For another example (and one similar to an issue that came up in a PbP game I play in, on these boards), since people seem to get so defensive about sexism - suppose you have a campaign in which one of the NPCs is a kid dying of a magical incurable wasting disease. This is "realistic", in that IRL kids do get horrible diseases for which we have no good cure. But if one of the players comes to you after the session where you introduce this NPC and says "Look, my little sister's just been diagnosed with leukemia, I really really do not want to think about this in my gaming time, can you please have the NPC get miraculously cured by a visiting high-level cleric and then never show up again?" - then if you insist on keeping your Kid With Cancer NPC when they're not essential to the game, you are not being a good friend, or a good GM.

The problem is, by that logic, a misogynistic GM who can quote his favourite quotes from any given Gor novel from memory running a game where gender is completely irrelevant (which basically means that women are just another version of men, with more chest and less chest hair) is somehow a preferable form of dealing with in-game sexism than a feminist GM who runs a game in a well-researched medieval setting dealing (with all the rigid gender roles this implies).
Of course, in extreme situations consideration for your fellow players should always be more important, but I would be righteously pissed if one of my relatives would suffer from a terminal disease and you spin a plot to include some miracle cure ingame, because in real life, the chances for some miracle cure are usually low and I would find such an euphemistic and contrived solution highly offensive.

Themrys
2013-10-13, 01:55 PM
It is of course your right to leave a game whose content squicks you out, but I think its pretty much being a jerk to join a game, decide its not the game for you, and then use that as an excuse to poach players into another game during the same timeslot.

I think it is not "being a jerk" to "steal" players, as they will only leave and join a new group if they want to. People cannot be stolen.

@Frozen Feet: Well, there may be players who think it makes for an interesting game to have no random encounters, and if everyone in the group is of that opinion, then why not play without random encounters?

But that has not much to do with what I was originally talking about. You wrote that you can't understand why someone would not want to have something they hate in a game they want to enjoy, and I pointed out the difference between car accidents and -isms. The difference also exists regarding alcohol, I think, as most characters in an rpg tend to be of the opinion that alcohol is a good thing.
One could craft a plot about a group of elves who have to find out who poisoned their well with alcohol. I'm not sure whether JusticeZero would like such a plot, but it would definitely be different from one where the party has to win a drinking contest.

Kalmageddon
2013-10-13, 02:42 PM
I think it is not "being a jerk" to "steal" players, as they will only leave and join a new group if they want to. People cannot be stolen.

@Frozen Feet: Well, there may be players who think it makes for an interesting game to have no random encounters, and if everyone in the group is of that opinion, then why not play without random encounters?

But that has not much to do with what I was originally talking about. You wrote that you can't understand why someone would not want to have something they hate in a game they want to enjoy, and I pointed out the difference between car accidents and -isms. The difference also exists regarding alcohol, I think, as most characters in an rpg tend to be of the opinion that alcohol is a good thing.
One could craft a plot about a group of elves who have to find out who poisoned their well with alcohol. I'm not sure whether JusticeZero would like such a plot, but it would definitely be different from one where the party has to win a drinking contest.

People can't be stolen but they can be manipulated, which is virtually the same thing.

That said, as mentioned in the OP this is not a discussion about uncomfortable topics in roleplaying game, but on the value of judging someone based on how they act in a roleplaying game, so please try not to derail this discussion, thank you. :smallsmile:

NichG
2013-10-13, 03:01 PM
That said, as mentioned in the OP this is not a discussion about uncomfortable topics in roleplaying game, but on the value of judging someone based on how they act in a roleplaying game, so please try not to derail this discussion, thank you. :smallsmile:

Fair enough. To get things back on track, maybe it'd be a good idea for the OP to summarize what people have said on either side and either check for misunderstanding or use that as a point to move forward? Because I'm not sure where the current point of debate within the original topic is right now.

Ifni
2013-10-13, 03:10 PM
Spoilered as it pertains to earlier discussion, contains replies to Black Jester, Frozen_Feet and Themrys (and +1 to JusticeZero).


the problem with this is, you are basically starting the discomfort Olympics. Whoever can look the most distressed wins.

Nope. I am saying that I trust the people I play with to judge whether something is a dealbreaker for them, and when they tell me something is a dealbreaker for them, I believe it and react accordingly. I like the people I play with. I want them to enjoy the game.

It's not "my concern is worse than your concern". It's "I play this game to have fun, if this is a major theme in the game I estimate that my net fun will be negative / severely reduced, given this information would you prefer to change it or shall I sit this one out?"

Like I said, if two people have conflicting dealbreakers then - well, I may be slightly more likely to be sympathetic to the person who's asking for something to be omitted than for something to be included (just because it's easier to find alternatives to something you like than to ignore something that's painful for you), but if they really are dealbreakers for both people, then that's not a reconcilable conflict.


This is basically a shouting match, because you cannot quantify the level of fun or 'un-fun' of a game, which basically means whoever is the loudest wins and the more tolerable you are, the less your opinion matters. I am not sure if I can offer a better alternative here, but I don't think this is a particularly good way to solve any issue, especially if one party claims a moral high ground and thus implies ignorance or malicious intent for whoever disagrees. And this is were this whole issue of judging other players on content is so polarizing.

Moral high ground is irrelevant - making this discussion about who is "right" just fosters animosity (because then someone has to be "wrong"), which is counterproductive if your actual goal is a game that everyone can enjoy. I am assuming here that this is indeed the goal. If your goal is to be publicly vindicated as right - okay? But that seems counterproductive to gaming.


If it doesn't work out and everybody wants to be stubborn, yes, that might be the only option. However, I personally think that demanding someone else should leave the group or be kicked out is almost always in bad form.

Have I ever suggested that, in any form? If I say something is a dealbreaker for me, and it's not addressed, I'll walk away. I do not hold a grudge against the other people involved when this happens.


There are exceptions of course, especially if you go to the lengths of introducing rather extreme examples.

The "family member with a nasty medical condition" example is taken straight from an existing campaign, wherein the GM asked people to alert him to any triggers (since we were touching on rape and some other pretty sensitive topics), and one player immediately asked for us to please avoid fantasy analogues to a certain real-world condition, because it's really hard for them to deal with.

So no, it's not an extreme example.


You might have someone who is against the inclusion or exclusion of one matter or the other, but the whole issue isn't important enough to that person to raise an argument about it; others might just be indifferent and are pulled to one side or the other because of personal connections to the people involved and so on. That's the problem with shouting matches like this: they tend to level any differentiation or more ambivalent positions.
I think that inflexibility and stubbornness in question like this is not a sign of strong principles but of narrow-mindedness. Yes, there are extremes which makes a compromise really unlikely or impossible, but those are a rare exception, not the norm. And that's why the discussion of extreme examples aren't helpful, because the solution in a truly extreme situation is rather simple: just don't play. But that doesn't help you at all to come up with a viable solution with the much more common and both more muddled and and usually not that extreme , because in real life, there are no magic issues that will turn a great game into a horrible one just for their inclusion.

There are issues that if they are in a game, I don't want to be in that game. It may well be a great game for other people! It won't be a great game for me. I am the only one who can judge this. Likewise, other people are the only ones who can judge that for themselves, and since I'm not a mind-reader, all I can do is accept what they tell me if they say that something is a Problem for them.

I play in a lot of online games. I have also withdrawn from recruitment for several games when it became clear that the GM wanted to go in directions that I didn't feel would be fun for me, and I've left one game in progress because of issues with another player. I'm not irritated about any of these; people are different, people have different preferences. (OK, I am mildly irritated about Barbarian Dude, because that was quite a way beyond the boundaries of usual social variation, but it's "mild irritation", not "upset".)


In real life, if you have a truly great game, there is some margin of error and tolerance which means, yes, there can be misgivings, but you should ask yourself if they are relevant enough to overshadow the good parts of the game.

Yup. And anyone coming to you to say "This is a serious problem for me, is it possible to change it" has probably already asked themselves that question, and gotten an answer of "yes". Most gamers, in my experience, are pretty conflict-averse (especially face-to-face), and won't bring something up unless it is in fact a Problem.

You may not see why it's a Problem for them, but it's pretty disrespectful to answer "This is a Problem for me" with "If you don't explain your reasoning in careful detail then I won't believe you, and I may not believe you even then".


And when I tell you honestly that the omission of one issue or the other makes me really uncomfortable, because it feels like its trivializing the issue (and because Utopia is contrived and boring)? You are back to the shouting matches.

No. I would never tell you that your opinion doesn't matter. It does. But if any game where women are socially equal to men feels contrived and boring to you, then you and I just shouldn't play in the same games, we have incompatible preferences. This doesn't mean you're a bad player! Just, y'know, incompatible preferences. My friends know not to invite me to the AWESOME BRAZILIAN BBQ RESTAURANT that they rave about because I'm vegetarian and the vegetarian options there are basically a glass of water and a lettuce leaf - this doesn't mean they're bad people, or that hanging out and eating steaks the size of your head is a bad thing, it's just something that I have no desire to do.


Perhaps I am slow today (it's Sunday after all), but I still haven't found why this one particular form of concern is somehow more relevant than the other.
And personally I for my part feel that if I am a player, any other player who is not the gamemaster who is telling me how I should or could play my character is clearly overstepping some boundaries and the message I would probably receive seems highly presumptuous and patronizing, and the gut reaction would very likely to decline this suggestion.

Reread what I wrote. Tell me where I said your preferences don't matter, or that your concern is less relevant.

That said, boundary issues should usually either be worked out between the GM and the player or be made clear to the whole group.


Exactly. But why do you think it is any way more effective if it works the other way around? What makes you think that telling anybody that a matter they consider as not that important within the context of a game or not even as applying here anyway (also known as "is the depiction of Orcs as evil necessarily racist?") and that therefore the game needs to be adjusted to avoid controversy is any more effective?

Errr, I don't? If the way it comes out is "not including Definitely Evil Orcs will make the game completely un-fun for a given player, this is a critical part of their gaming experience", and some other people at the table are like "Eh, we don't really like Definitely Evil Orcs, but we can cope", then Definitely Evil Orcs it is!

This does rely on trusting other people to accurately relay how important something is to them, rather than just trying to score points. (And I admit it is hard for me to see why lack of Definitely Evil Orcs would be a dealbreaker for someone. But if someone I like and trust tells me that it is for them, then okay, so be it.) Yeah, if you have toxic interpersonal relationships inside your gaming group, this is all way more complicated. I left those groups behind quite a long time ago and have been very happy not to look back.


The only way i can see to find a solution to this dilemma that doesn't include "it's either my way or I quit" is the promise to try to handle any issue with the necessary care and respect for the issue. No censorship, no euphemisms, no disrespect, and keeping everything in good taste. Does that always work? No of course not. People are people and people make mistakes. Sometimes someone is just inattentive or a joke comes out a lot less funny than intended and sometimes, people are a bit ignorant, not because they have some nefarious purpose or trying to offend, but because it just didn't seem like such a big issue. That's a point where constructive criticism and patience brings you a lot further than outrage.

Right. And if someone is telling you "this is a Problem for me, can we please find a way to change it so I can enjoy this campaign again" - then that is communication and constructive criticism. And if it turns out that changing the game to fix that Problem would destroy everything you like about it - if your dealbreakers are diametrically opposed - then no amount of patience and communication is going to help.

Also, it's my choice whether I wish to spend my gaming time calling other people on their mistakes. Quite often, I do not want to do this. Quite often, I would rather walk away and find another game. Sometimes I'm under less stress IRL, or the campaign itself is just so awesome that it's worth the grind of "Hey, do you think you could please stop referring to women as evil alien entities every single session, it's kinda bothering me as the only woman present?" But sometimes it's not, and I do not have any responsibility to spend my time and energy on a pastime that's draining and not fun for me.

If you see "keeping the group together" as a higher priority than "making sure people are enjoying themselves and not feeling harassed", then yeah, we're coming at this from totally different angles and are likely to disagree.


The problem is, by that logic, a misogynistic GM who can quote his favourite quotes from any given Gor novel from memory running a game where gender is completely irrelevant (which basically means that women are just another version of men, with more chest and less chest hair) is somehow a preferable form of dealing with in-game sexism than a feminist GM who runs a game in a well-researched medieval setting dealing (with all the rigid gender roles this implies).

There may indeed be cases where what I want to do after work is kick back and slaughter monsters in a world where my character's gender is completely and gloriously irrelevant, rather than work through a detailed exploration of how much life sucked for people with my chromosomes a thousand years ago, even if it's done from a feminist-deconstruction standpoint. Maybe you can't understand that, maybe you wouldn't ever feel that way. Can you believe me when I say it's true for me?

If the GM is a raging misogynist, then the game may be (probably will be) uncomfortable as hell for reasons entirely unrelated to what's happening to the characters, of course. But that's a situation where communication, constructive criticism, discussion etc are much less likely to resolve anything - and honestly, as soon as I figure out what's going on, I'll probably be gone from that campaign.

But between "campaign where gender is entirely irrelevant" (and men are just women with less chest and more chest hair) and "campaign where we explore the awfulness of medieval patriarchy" - the relevant question in determining what is 'preferable' for me, since this is a hobby, is not 'which is more virtuous', it's 'which is more enjoyable for me'. And sometimes the answer will be 1, and sometimes the answer will be 2 (although if I'm a woman dealing with sexual harassment at work, then the answer may always be 1, and there are certainly people and circumstances for whom the answer will always be 2) - but I am the only one who can make that judgement, for me personally. And if my answer is in gross disagreement with other people in the group, then it's probably better if I don't try to shoehorn my gender-egalitarian monster-slaying into their Evils Of Patriarchy game, and vice versa.


Of course, in extreme situations consideration for your fellow players should always be more important, but I would be righteously pissed if one of my relatives would suffer from a terminal disease and you spin a plot to include some miracle cure ingame, because in real life, the chances for some miracle cure are usually low and I would find such an euphemistic and contrived solution highly offensive.

Yup! People are different. Some people would want to resolve this with a this-never-happened retcon. Some people would want to resolve it with a handwave "yeah, the kid is fine". Some people would want to resolve it with a handwave "eh, the kid died". Some people would want to resolve it with a lengthy wish-fulfillment quest to find the magic maguffin and would be perfectly happy with a campaign based on that. Some people would want to use it as an exploration of end-of-life consent issues.

If your player tells you about a problem and suggests a fix that would minimize the pain for them (which was the example scenario here), then how you would feel in an analogous situation (which you're not experiencing) matters quite a lot less than the preferred coping mechanism of the person who is actually dealing with it.

(But yes, the example I actually gave was that a plot based around "Finding the Maguffin to Cure Magical Cancer" might (not necessarily would, but easily could) be excruciatingly painful for a player who's dealing with a RL situation where there is no miracle cure to non-magical cancer, and that you as GM might want to change your campaign plan in that case (if you want the player to be able to play). And if that's not the central conceit of the campaign, do you actually need to incorporate cancer at all, when someone is asking you to remove it?)


The problem here is that some of us have difficulties understanding why someone would even ask something like this, and it's not because we haven't had bad or uncomfortable things happen to us. There are a lot of things that would make me frown or even cry, but I don't ask anyone to avoid them or remove them from a game; in fact, I've gone out of my way to add them to a game myself. This includes such funny things as car crashes, loss of friendship, romantic rejection, chronic depression, suicide, death of close family members, maternal abuse, getting fired, so on and so forth. Analysis and examination of things that trouble me are one of the things I use RPGs for. If someone else introduces an element close to my heart to a narrative, I'm more likely to ignore it or focus on it in the game rather than reject it or get upset about it.

Same goes when I'm a GM. If someone lacks tact (etc.), I'm morely likely to mock them, than actually stop them. I roll with the blows - if my players want to make fools of themselves or their characters, by God they are free to do so. And because of this, for me, the question in case of an upset player always becomes "why can't s/he do the same?".

OK. But can you accept that maybe part of this is an aspect of your specific personality, and that other people may be different? What's helpful for you may not be helpful for them, and vice versa. None of us are mind-readers. If someone comes to you and says "This is a problem for me", is it so hard to react with "OK, how should we fix it?" rather than "But it wouldn't be a problem for me so WHY is it a problem for you?"

Or much more succinctly:

Seriously. I don't owe you a gruesome and private story as payment for you not to be a jerk. Not being a jerk is its own reward.

@Themrys: re barbarians climbing into beds, you are right, the Harry Potter beds would make awesome hiding places :smallsmile: But no, this particular case involved groping and telling her drunkenly how beautiful she was, so it was fairly clear it wasn't innocent.

tasw
2013-10-13, 11:37 PM
Its definitely best to not assign personal motives to things that happen in the game. That said if something is against your personal beliefs its well within your rights to bail on that game. Its not within your rights to force those beliefs on people who may not share them though. And thats true not matter what those beliefs are.

Sometimes a group is just not a good fit.

Over the last 2 years I've only lost 2 players and in both cases it was for the best for everyone.

The first one we were playing a mage game set in a post war of the rings middle earth and the players were members of a mercenary group who were conquering a town based on tortuga from the inside as basically a new gang taking over the town.

They were not evil characters for the most part but they were certainly not good ones either. Mage has a different morality system but if it was D&D most of them would be either chaotic neutral or lawful neutral and they did some very evil things in the context of conquering neighborhoods and winning the gang war to conquer territory.

They did some good things too. But the brunt of of it was fairly realistic depictions of brutal gang violence and dominance.

One player after 2 sessions said "guys I'm going home. I game to be a hero" Hey fair enough. We had played very heroic campaigns before but this was specifically a darker toned more morally grey campaign that a few of the players took liberties making extremely dark and he wasnt comfortable with that.

It happens, no hard feelings. Now if he walked away thinking we all think that sort of depravity and violence is acceptable that would be wrong. I dont know, we havent talked since so maybe he did. But he would be wrong in that regard.

The other one just left my new game. Its a very loose beer and pretzels campaign where we all bring alchohol, drink during the game and care more about smashing bad guys (or saving them, weird twist) gathering loot and moving the story along and by the end of the night we can all get a bit silly. I'm as guilty of it as anyone else, maybe more.

And he likes a tight run, by the raw game and as it turns out, doesnt drink. So a bad fit for this campaign. Fair enough, it happens no hard feelings either way I think.

Basically what I'm saying is being a bad match because of real world beliefs does not mean you can accurate judge whether the people your not a good match for are good or bad people based on that mismatch.

AMFV
2013-10-14, 01:48 AM
To answer the OP, in my experience people tend to roleplay one of two ways.

The first type of roleplayer tends to go for wish-fulfillment, they play an idealized version of themselves. I fall into this group, I tend to play characters who represent how I would like to perceive myself. Lawful, physically capable, sometimes skilled at magic, and intelligent. For this sort of player you could analyze what they believed to be important.

However it is important to note, that I have played characters that exemplify what I perceive as my bad characteristics as well, for example evil intelligent characters who are unfeeling or harsh. The reason that this is important is that is my perception of myself that matters, this is a good as psychoanalyzing somebody from reading their journal paraphrased by somebody else or not very good at all.

The second type of roleplayer tends to try to create characters to explore facets of personality that are not their own, ergo a shy person playing as a charismatic bard, for example. There is some interplay obviously, I play evil characters sometimes to represent things that I might not experience, but the difference is that I generally want these characters to eventually become an idealized version of me, redeemed rather than enjoying their differences.

Obviously the second type could only be used to see what people believe they are not. Which is not terribly useful either in terms of psychology. The answer is that really you can’t psychoanalyze people based on what type of character they roleplay as, it’s slightly better than what video games they play, but not by much.

Now one could make non-moral judgements about somebody, such as "he is outgoing", or "she is shy," but those could be made in most other social activities, and roleplaying has no specific advantage. Like most game type activities you can determine if and when somebody will cheat however, which is certainly something worth knowing.

navar100
2013-10-15, 10:11 PM
Yeah, but some players (suprisingly easily) get convinced that a GM putting their character through some kind of disaster (in this case, a car crash) is somehow evidence that the GM is out to get them, the player. I've seen it seriously argued in these forums that a character should not be put through any sort of negative experience without explicit permission from the player. (In context of some systems/games this would be a valid argument. In context of D&D where it was displayed... not so much.)

"[Player Y] thinks [Negative thing X] is a-okay in real life" is not the only fallacious conclusion a judgemental person might draw. "[Player Y] subjecting my character to [Negative thing X] is a sign he's out to get me!" is just as possible, and just as harmful to a group.

Back in college during 2E a DM admitted to having bad things happen to my character on purpose to get me angry. It was the end of our friendship, admittedly it was strained for a while. It started because in another game where we were both players he was upset my cleric would cast spells that were not Cure Light Wounds or I used my turn to attack with my staff as I'm not a fighter.

Morithias
2013-10-15, 10:42 PM
Male players that always play female characters worry me. Not that I think they're gay (some certainly are in the closet), but they have mommy issues or secretly want to be dominated by powerful women. Luckily when I was a DM (a decade ago) I never ran into this with my group, but if a player was gay I would just tell them to play a gay character of the same sex as they are.


Heaven forbid you ever meet a transexual. If it wasn't for the fact I'm too busy laughing my rear off at how over the top and offensive this statement is, to the point I'm almost sure it's a poe's law joke, I'd probably have a 7 paragraph rant.

Hell you want to know why I actually started playing female characters? We started writing our own settings and having continuity, and I realized that having every heroic party in the setting be all-male would have bad implications so I took on the role of the girl.

Of course later I discovered my trans side, and well. Here I am now.

Although just a question.

If having those 'issues' is what a male characters playing girls imply. What would you say a female character who always plays men would imply?

Or do you have no answer for this, and are just being misandrist?

Segev
2013-10-16, 10:28 AM
Although just a question.

If having those 'issues' is what a male characters playing girls imply. What would you say a female character who always plays men would imply?

Or do you have no answer for this, and are just being misandrist?

I see passive aggression, assertion of moral superiority over somebody who might possibly disagree with you, and your own potential bigotry at calling these 'issues' out as bad things that the person whom you are addressing is morally wrong for drawing conclusions on.

Impressive demonstration.

Morithias
2013-10-16, 03:50 PM
I see passive aggression, assertion of moral superiority over somebody who might possibly disagree with you, and your own potential bigotry at calling these 'issues' out as bad things that the person whom you are addressing is morally wrong for drawing conclusions on.

Impressive demonstration.

I notice how you didn't have an answer to my question.

Tim Proctor
2013-10-16, 04:00 PM
I notice how you didn't have an answer to my question.

Probably because your question was towards Karkos and not Segev. The statement that if someone doesn't answer you results in a form of bigotry is a rather odd notion, that's a logically sounds as 'if it doesn't fit, you must acquit'.

Morithias
2013-10-16, 04:12 PM
Probably because your question was towards Karkos and not Segev. The statement that if someone doesn't answer you results in a form of bigotry is a rather odd notion, that's a logically sounds as 'if it doesn't fit, you must acquit'.

Considering the statement he made was one of the most clearly offensive things I've ever read. I would actually consider him a bigot. I'm just curious what kind.

"Males who play females have mommy issues and want to be beaten."

My god that's offensive to transexuals, females, and males. It implies that male to female transexuals are mentally ill people, it implies that females are inherently weaker and that femininity is a form of weaken or wanting to be abused, and it implies that a male who is feminine in anyway or willing to explore such is somehow mentally weaker than the testosterone poisoned 'manly men'. Since roleplaying has nothing to do with physical activity obviously.

I really have half a mind to report the post. It seriously comes across like if someone said "A white person who constantly plays black people, dreams of raping people and committing crimes while claiming to be discriminated against if ever called on doing anything wrong."

It's a claim that is offensive and untrue on basically every level.

Segev
2013-10-16, 04:13 PM
Indeed. For me to answer the question would be to put words in another's mouth. Since I do not share his reaction to men playing women ("all the time" or not), I can't really respond meaningfully to the question.

I just found the way the whole post was structured and how the question was delivered to be an impressive distillation of everything my earliest post in this thread was talking about.

I mean, it's about as honest a question as, "Have you stopped beating your wife with your bare hands?"


Edited in after a new post showed up while I was writing: You found his post to be offensive, and assume him a bad person, because he has views and opinions and stated he has questions raised under circumstances you would not want them raised. If his post is worthy of reporting, so is yours, for much the same crime. Though in truth, I found your post more offensive than his, despite agreeing with neither.

Morithias
2013-10-16, 04:16 PM
Indeed. For me to answer the question would be to put words in another's mouth. Since I do not share his reaction to men playing women ("all the time" or not), I can't really respond meaningfully to the question.

I just found the way the whole post was structured and how the question was delivered to be an impressive distillation of everything my earliest post in this thread was talking about.

I mean, it's about as honest a question as, "Have you stopped beating your wife with your bare hands?"

Alright fair point, the extra question at the end probably wasn't necessary. I'm sorry for that, but still it's a serious berserk button of mine.

Tim Proctor
2013-10-16, 04:16 PM
Considering the statement he made was one of the most clearly offensive things I've ever read. I would actually consider him a bigot. I'm just curious what kind.

"Males who play females have mommy issues and want to be beaten."

My god that's offensive to transexuals, females, and males. It implies that male to female transexuals are mentally ill people, it implies that females are inherently weaker and that femininity is a form of weaken or wanting to be abused, and it implies that a male who is feminine in anyway or willing to explore such is somehow mentally weaker than the testosterone poisoned 'manly men'. Since roleplaying has nothing to do with physical activity obviously.

I really have half a mind to report the post. It seriously comes across like if someone said "A white person who constantly plays black people, dreams of raping people and committing crimes while claiming to be discriminated against if ever called on doing anything wrong."

It's a claim that is offensive and untrue on basically every level.
Then why are you trying to start a fight with Segev and not Karkos? I don't get it.

Segev
2013-10-16, 04:21 PM
Alright fair point, the extra question at the end probably wasn't necessary. I'm sorry for that, but still it's a serious berserk button of mine.

Fair enough. I fully understand "berserk buttons." Your post just pushed several of mine. ^^;

You may want to rethink your approach to trying to make a point; appeal to emotion works a surprising amount of the time, but ultimately it "works" by creating a polarizing "with me or against me" sense rather than by coming to any sort of real conclusion. It also inherently, when used in this fashion, dehumanizes anybody who dares disagree with you, rendering discussion meaningless. And if the sin of bigotry is its dehumanization of its victims, then that style of "argument" or "point making" or whatever you want to call it is just as bad as bigotry.

I mean that seriously: it inflicts exactly as much harm, in the context of an internet forum. It doesn't matter how bigotted anybody on this forum is, the worst they can do is insult you. The same is true of your posts, so when you dehumanize them, you insult them just as much.

I find that it is generally best to assume that even those who disagree with you are also full and complex human beings, and that discussing your issues calmly rather than resorting to any sort of dehumanizing tactic works best.

This doesn't mean I always succeed, and for when I fail, I do apologize.

Scow2
2013-10-16, 04:27 PM
Male players that always play female characters worry me. Not that I think they're gay (some certainly are in the closet), but they have mommy issues or secretly want to be dominated by powerful women. Luckily when I was a DM (a decade ago) I never ran into this with my group, but if a player was gay I would just tell them to play a gay character of the same sex as they are.Y'know what... In my experience, the odds of crossplayers being Gay OR having weird desires are laughably small. Quite often, at least as I've seen and done, cross players tend to lack underlying/fetishistic motivation, the second largest (And largest in, I want to say 'less mature' areas) are playing an idealized member of the opposite sex. There is almost no chance a guy who rolls up a Chainmail-bikini clad Amazon with huge... tracts of land... is gay.

I don't consider Transsexuals (I've gamed with two in my life so far) to be cross-players. A guy playing a guy is a guy playing a guy, even if his body's not quite 'right'. Same with a girl playing a girl.

Segev
2013-10-16, 04:34 PM
I know two guys who, when they cross-play, I do not have trouble remembering what gender they're playing. One is gay, the other is most definitely not. They both just have a way of playing their characters in character in ways that get the gender across. Notably, when they're playing males, I don't mistake their characters for female, either.

This is regarding face-to-face RP at the table, where I can hear their voices.

Online, over text, I really just pay attention to the name next to the lines being said, and have no difficulty.

As a rule, I play males. In person, I always do so because my voice shatters my sense of immersion the moment I try to speak for any female character. (When DMing, I'm a little better about it, because to my mind I'm the narrator rather than actually being an actor.) I very occasionally play females online; it requires a character concept that needs to be female to work properly, because otherwise I prefer to play my own sex as it's one less divergence from my own mindset that I have to worry about maintaining when being "in character."

(Of course, if you don't think men and women have differing mindsets, then my statement is nonsensical. *shrug*)

Mr Beer
2013-10-16, 04:36 PM
Considering the statement he made was one of the most clearly offensive things I've ever read.

Is this your first time on the internet?

Themrys
2013-10-16, 05:10 PM
Y'know what... In my experience, the odds of crossplayers being Gay OR having weird desires are laughably small. Quite often, at least as I've seen and done, cross players tend to lack underlying/fetishistic motivation, the second largest (And largest in, I want to say 'less mature' areas) are playing an idealized member of the opposite sex. There is almost no chance a guy who rolls up a Chainmail-bikini clad Amazon with huge... tracts of land... is gay.

I don't consider Transsexuals (I've gamed with two in my life so far) to be cross-players. A guy playing a guy is a guy playing a guy, even if his body's not quite 'right'. Same with a girl playing a girl.

I do think that a guy who plays a chainmail-bikini clad amazon has a fethishistic motivation/ weird desires. :smallamused:
Women, who wear armor that will get them killed in next to no time, do not exist in real life, so that's something I call "weird".


However, people who play normal people of the opposite sex, are most likely just normal people.

TuggyNE
2013-10-16, 05:40 PM
Is this your first time on the internet?

Aww, come on, overstatements are the lingua franca of teh intarwebs: EVERYBODY uses them! :smallyuk:

Warlord476
2013-10-16, 06:03 PM
Actually, I think you can tell quite a lot. I have played with the same group of people over a number of years, and you can see recurring ways in the way people play....

I can easily see how you could reach certain conclusions about our personalities using these descriptions.

I'd agree with this, to the extent of 'quite a lot.'

It's a bit like being with the same group of people, drinking together. Which I mention because alcohol came up in this thread as well. You can't always tell who's going to be the ugly drunk, but it can be a revelation. Likewise, you can't always tell which player is going to decide they want their way no matter what the rest of the group thinks. In a nicer way, sometimes alcohol/roleplay helps people break out of their shell and you see a much more interesting person.

Others are more predictable, like the guy that has a social connectivity problem already. Or the guy who connects well, and barely shuts up.

Mr Beer
2013-10-16, 06:52 PM
Aww, come on, overstatements are the lingua franca of teh intarwebs: EVERYBODY uses them! :smallyuk:

That's the most hyberbolic generalisation I have ever read!

Lord Raziere
2013-10-16, 07:08 PM
Is this your first time on the internet?

I myself have been on the internet for years, and I still do not regard offensive statements as things worthy of tolerating. I don't think I ever will. People should be polite and civil.

Mr Beer
2013-10-16, 07:49 PM
I myself have been on the internet for years, and I still do not regard offensive statements as things worthy of tolerating. I don't think I ever will. People should be polite and civil.

I didn't say otherwise.

Urpriest
2013-10-16, 08:30 PM
Heaven forbid you ever meet a transexual. If it wasn't for the fact I'm too busy laughing my rear off at how over the top and offensive this statement is, to the point I'm almost sure it's a poe's law joke, I'd probably have a 7 paragraph rant.

The nice thing is that, from what it looks like, Karkos's position is based off of ignorance, rather than something viler. I mean, the guy seems to blur sub and trans people together, even.

The way I see it, that's an opportunity for education. You can't win an argument on the internet, but you can tell someone about a part of existence they haven't heard about before. So in this case, I think being civil and explaining how actual gender-atypical people behave might make it so that the next time Karkos wanders into this sort of thread (or someone gender-atypical in real life) he won't have this sort of reaction.

AMFV
2013-10-16, 09:04 PM
I do think that a guy who plays a chainmail-bikini clad amazon has a fethishistic motivation/ weird desires. :smallamused:
Women, who wear armor that will get them killed in next to no time, do not exist in real life, so that's something I call "weird".


However, people who play normal people of the opposite sex, are most likely just normal people.

Well I hate to disagree on an off-topic point. But I've been to war, with female Marines, some of whom wore makeup in Iraq, in a warzone. People still want to look good sometimes even to the point of making personal risks to do so.

Makeup obviously has a lot of potential negative issues in a combat zone, ranging from not allowing your skin to breath correctly, preventing sweating in certain regions, and potentially having negative interactions with chemicals from toxic burn pits for example.

AMFV
2013-10-16, 09:05 PM
The nice thing is that, from what it looks like, Karkos's position is based off of ignorance, rather than something viler. I mean, the guy seems to blur sub and trans people together, even.

The way I see it, that's an opportunity for education. You can't win an argument on the internet, but you can tell someone about a part of existence they haven't heard about before. So in this case, I think being civil and explaining how actual gender-atypical people behave might make it so that the next time Karkos wanders into this sort of thread (or someone gender-atypical in real life) he won't have this sort of reaction.

I don't normally like to comment just to tell somebody that what they said was awesome, but this is freaking awesome, and probably the smartest thing that anybody has said in this thread, or in many other threads for some time.

tasw
2013-10-16, 09:10 PM
than the testosterone poisoned 'manly men'.

I really have half a mind to report the post.

You might want to remember that bigotry is a state of mind of a bigot: someone who, as a result of their prejudices, treats other people with fear, distrust, hatred, contempt, or intolerance and the bolded statement is a clear one of your own bigotry against males who are most comfortable as a traditional male.

Scow2
2013-10-16, 09:11 PM
Well I hate to disagree on an off-topic point. But I've been to war, with female Marines, some of whom wore makeup in Iraq, in a warzone. People still want to look good sometimes even to the point of making personal risks to do so.

Makeup obviously has a lot of potential negative issues in a combat zone, ranging from not allowing your skin to breath correctly, preventing sweating in certain regions, and potentially having negative interactions with chemicals from toxic burn pits for example.Because I hold On-Topicness in the highest contempt, the military finally learned that form-fitting armors are actually much better for females to wear than giving them male armors, even though the curves make them weigh half again as much, the better fit makes them feel as though they weigh half as much as male armor on females. They're actually making female combat armor inspired by Xena's outfit (Though obviously covers more), and it's gotten overwhelmingly positive results from those wearing it (But not those who have to foot the bill - it's more expensive than male armor)

AMFV
2013-10-16, 09:32 PM
Because I hold On-Topicness in the highest contempt, the military finally learned that form-fitting armors are actually much better for females to wear than giving them male armors, even though the curves make them weigh half again as much, the better fit makes them feel as though they weigh half as much as male armor on females. They're actually making female combat armor inspired by Xena's outfit (Though obviously covers more), and it's gotten overwhelmingly positive results from those wearing it (But not those who have to foot the bill - it's more expensive than male armor)

Half again as much would be pretty ridiculous though, given that those things weigh like a freaking ton. It was a workout for me to run around with them all day and I was like a 180 lb kind of squat guy. I can't imagine what it would be like to have a 90 lb body armor as a 120 lb female. That would probably suck. Although getting shot might suck more.

Scow2
2013-10-16, 09:36 PM
Half again as much would be pretty ridiculous though, given that those things weigh like a freaking ton. It was a workout for me to run around with them all day and I was like a 180 lb kind of squat guy. I can't imagine what it would be like to have a 90 lb body armor as a 120 lb female. That would probably suck. Although getting shot might suck more.Well, considering that the response has been "They feel half as light as the (lighter) male armor"... And from my understanding, it's not the full armor that weighs 60 lbs, but the full combat gear. The armor portion is much lighter.

tasw
2013-10-16, 09:55 PM
I've worn this modern gear as well (well 10 years ago) and I would have preferred something a little more form fitting as well as a male. Too much of the weight is on the shoulders, which are already supporting your pack, weapon in march, and a good bit of ammunition a lot of the time.

Something a little tighter, or with at least a very good way of using a belt to distribute some more weight on the waist would have been nice.

It makes perfect sense to me that something like that for females which would logically attach a lot of weight on the waist and hips would feel a lot lighter to a female even if it did technically weigh more.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-17, 05:28 AM
@Ifni:
If someone comes to you and says "This is a problem for me", is it so hard to react with "OK, how should we fix it?" rather than "But it wouldn't be a problem for me so WHY is it a problem for you?"

Surely you can see how understanding why something is a problem is quite essential to coming up with how to solve it?

Lorsa
2013-10-17, 06:06 AM
@Ifni:

Surely you can see how understanding why something is a problem is quite essential to coming up with how to solve it?

But the way the question is phrased implies that the one posing it isn't at all interested in finding out why, nor solving it. A better way would be "Ok, could you explain to me more about this problem so I understand why?".

Themrys
2013-10-17, 06:29 AM
But the way the question is phrased implies that the one posing it isn't at all interested in finding out why, nor solving it. A better way would be "Ok, could you explain to me more about this problem so I understand why?".


Or just "Ok, I don't understand why this is a problem, so I can't solve it - please make a suggestion how it can be solved".
And then, just listen and believe.

I most likely won't really be able to , for example, understand exactly why someone has a problem with the description of alcohol-consumption, so trying to would just be a waste of time.
I just have to know how to solve the problem.

Segev
2013-10-17, 08:02 AM
Because I hold On-Topicness in the highest contempt, the military finally learned that form-fitting armors are actually much better for females to wear than giving them male armors, even though the curves make them weigh half again as much, the better fit makes them feel as though they weigh half as much as male armor on females. They're actually making female combat armor inspired by Xena's outfit (Though obviously covers more), and it's gotten overwhelmingly positive results from those wearing it (But not those who have to foot the bill - it's more expensive than male armor)Continuing the contemptuous tangenting:

Clearly, what we need is to invent power-armor. Possibly with auto-fitting capabilities so that it's as form-fitting as makes sense for any wearer of any sex.


Though I have to say, I find it amusing that we have real-world evidence that what fiction has done with armor for decades (at least) to call out a female warrior - which has been snickered about as "impractical" or "silly" by many even as they accept it as a genre convention - is actually apparently better design for real-world armor.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-17, 08:14 AM
@Themrys: I can think of several different problems I'd have with descriptions of alcohol consumption in a game, but none of those would cause me to stand up and leave, or even ask the hypothetical player to omit those descriptions.

The problem here isn't "it hurts my feelings!" I have a solution to that problem: "shut out your feelings". You've forgotten the question is far more specific than what you portray. It isn't "this isn't a problem for me, so why is it for you?"

It is "I feel your pain & it's not that bad, so why are you crying?"

Just "accepting people are different" doesn't do anything, because the problem won't go away before I know how those people are different. I can't accept an argument as valid before knowing what it is.

huttj509
2013-10-17, 08:32 AM
Though I have to say, I find it amusing that we have real-world evidence that what fiction has done with armor for decades (at least) to call out a female warrior - which has been snickered about as "impractical" or "silly" by many even as they accept it as a genre convention - is actually apparently better design for real-world armor.

Somehow I doubt the armor being discusses has hard metal inward-pointing wedges and is expected to redirect blows from blades, as opposed to absorbing hits from bullets.

Scow2
2013-10-17, 08:34 AM
Though I have to say, I find it amusing that we have real-world evidence that what fiction has done with armor for decades (at least) to call out a female warrior - which has been snickered about as "impractical" or "silly" by many even as they accept it as a genre convention - is actually apparently better design for real-world armor.Well, you don't want breast-conforming armor to the extent seen in fantasy, because that puts an axe-head right against the sternum. And, you don't want exposed vital areas either. It really just comes down to remembering that females have different body proportions (Notably, shorter torsos) than males.

Stephen_E
2013-10-17, 08:41 AM
Continuing the contemptuous tangenting:

Clearly, what we need is to invent power-armor. Possibly with auto-fitting capabilities so that it's as form-fitting as makes sense for any wearer of any sex.


Though I have to say, I find it amusing that we have real-world evidence that what fiction has done with armor for decades (at least) to call out a female warrior - which has been snickered about as "impractical" or "silly" by many even as they accept it as a genre convention - is actually apparently better design for real-world armor.

My understanding from the articles I read about the US military working on form fitting armour is that it's intended for both sexes because the studies indicated both would benefit significantly from it. But the more extreme problems women were having in wearing armour patterned to the standard male build were what finally pushed them into acting. Things like womennot been able to let there arms hang down normally because the armholes went out to far, and the weight draping even worse for them than the men. There is also evidence of a significantly higher level of various wear/tear injuries among women that might well be related to the armour problems. Will be interesting to see.

Spiryt
2013-10-17, 08:47 AM
Well, you don't want breast-conforming armor to the extent seen in fantasy, because that puts an axe-head right against the sternum. And, you don't want exposed vital areas either. It really just comes down to remembering that females have different body proportions (Notably, shorter torsos) than males.

Uh, I'm no anthropologist, but I'm pretty sure, that its rather easy to find two men with completely different torso length/over length proportions - and difference being way higher than average difference between men and women.

Obviously, women are built differently though, but generally, the problem here is that armor, or any other heavy clothing won't be really comfortable without being tailored to individual.

And modern stuff usually isn't.

Stephen_E
2013-10-17, 08:48 AM
Back to the topic. My experience is that most people I've played with I gain very limited perspective on their actual character/psychology from their play styles. But that said there are some players I get quite a lot from. I think it's a combination of two features.
1) The more driven/extreme/"Out there" their personality are the more likely it's obvious in play.
2) The more they enter into "game mode" when they play the less you can trust observations as reflecting their "real character".

Scow2
2013-10-17, 09:56 AM
Uh, I'm no anthropologist, but I'm pretty sure, that its rather easy to find two men with completely different torso length/over length proportions - and difference being way higher than average difference between men and women.

Obviously, women are built differently though, but generally, the problem here is that armor, or any other heavy clothing won't be really comfortable without being tailored to individual.

And modern stuff usually isn't.As someone who has studied anatomy, Guys are a lot more "One Size Fits All" than women, and there are significant differences in proportions and structure on the skeletal level, especially in the torso.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-17, 10:03 AM
Oooh, are we going to talk actual, verifiable differences between sexes here? Let me fetch my popcorn.

JusticeZero
2013-10-17, 10:07 AM
@Themrys: I can think of several different problems I'd have with descriptions of alcohol consumption in a game, but none of those would cause me to stand up and leave, or even ask the hypothetical player to omit those descriptions.You aren't me. You haven't lived my life.
The problem here isn't "it hurts my feelings!" I have a solution to that problem: "shut out your feelings". You've forgotten the question is far more specific than what you portray. It isn't "this isn't a problem for me, so why is it for you?"
It is "I feel your pain & it's not that bad, so why are you crying?"
Just "accepting people are different" doesn't do anything, because the problem won't go away before I know how those people are different. I can't accept an argument as valid before knowing what it is.

You aren't my psychotherapist, and I don't go into those things with those until the third or fourth meeting anyways. There are things I haven't even gone into detail with my wife on. I don't owe you that answer. Furthermore, you do not feel my pain. You have no idea what I am thinking about anything.
You are not going to make the problem "go away". You think far too highly of yourself there. This is a matter of someone essentially telling you "It hurts when I do X", to which the answer is not "Oh, can you explain why, how this happened, explain your sex life, your worst nightmares, and your deepest darkest secrets to me or else i'm going to make you do X anyways (and I still might make you do X)". Instead, the answer is to say "Okay, then I won't make you do X".

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-17, 10:38 AM
You are overthinking things. I don't need your whole history to understand why you are being upset about some topic. While I can't read thoughts, I am empathetic enough to understand how others feel - provided they tell me what's the problem and why.

EDIT: also, if something is that private/personal to you, why would you even want to draw attention to it by demanding its specific omission? Wouldn't it be better to either draw attention away from it via some excuse, or suffer in silence? If you are unwilling to discuss your pains, why proclaim you are in pain?

JusticeZero
2013-10-17, 10:51 AM
EDIT: also, if something is that private/personal to you, why would you even want to draw attention to it by demanding its specific omission? Wouldn't it be better to either draw attention away from it via some excuse, or suffer in silence? If you are unwilling to discuss your pains, why proclaim you are in pain?
Because the alternative to me saying something is for me to wordlessly stand up, pick up my stuff, and walk out the door with a slam and leave.

Segev
2013-10-17, 10:55 AM
Honestly, if it's one of a very few things that somebody has a major hangup about, and they're pretty reasonable overall, I'm not going to be offended if they tell me it bugs them and the reasons are so personally painful that they don't want to go into it. Interestingly, such things are RARELY "Social Crusader" issues, and even when they are, one can usually tell the difference between Social Crusading and "this is a thing I don't want to deal with in my play-times, please" by the way in which they want it (not) handled.

So between how they want it (not) handled and just how many of these "bad things" they don't want to show up, it's actually pretty easy to pick up a pattern of whether this is a person with a genuine issue to be respected if you want to play with them, and a person who's just trying to manipulate things by playing victim and social justice cards (even if, to them, the social justice thing is dead serious).

There are things I would rather not have directed at my characters. There are topics I'd rather not be brought up at the table. Mostly, the latter I'm cool with as long as we "fade to black" to keep from getting graphic; my own hang-ups and discomfort zones are relatively mild when it comes to non-"social justice" issues. When it does come to "social justice," my berserk buttons are actually others trying to impose them, rather than the other way around.

I fault nobody for having comfort zones. I do fault people when they start insisting everything bend to their comfort zone, even when it isn't directed at them and is being handled with at least PG-13 levels of delicacy.

...that's actually probably a good way to put it: If something bothers you, under most circumstances, it is reasonable to ask you to tolerate it up to what would be kosher in a PG-13 movie. And by this I don't mean "only use what subjects are considered OK in PG-13 movies," but rather, go no more into detail on the subject that is troubling than a PG-13 movie goes into sex or violence or foul language.

If whatever it is is a REAL traumatic hang-up, it's probably reasonable to ask for a restriction to PG level.

And, of course, if it's not a critical thing that needs to be there for some reason, just leaving it out probably isn't an issue. We're talking about situations where there's a need, for some reason, for the subject to come up at all.

Sith_Happens
2013-10-17, 12:20 PM
Oooh, are we going to talk actual, verifiable differences between sexes here? Let me fetch my popcorn.

I can only speak for myself, but I've never heard of any controversy existing with regards to the differences in physical body structure.

huttj509
2013-10-17, 01:16 PM
I can only speak for myself, but I've never heard of any controversy existing with regards to the differences in physical body structure.

The issue tends to come with people conflating various physical attributes with worth and overall capability.

For example, I am taller than many people. This is not a good thing, this is not a bad thing, it just is. I can change lightbulbs more easily, but I've also knocked dangly-bits off of chandeliers (fortunately plastic) and winged my head on silly low doorways and ceiling-stairwell intersections (and I'm only just over 6').

Depending on societal background, there can be assumed implications of "tall = good, capable, reach things, short = bad, needs help" or other such BS. A statement of "I am relatively tall" can be interpreted as intending to convey more than just physical measurements.

Now, take a simple thing like height, and the implications and assumptions that can be involved, and apply it to a statement like "men are taller than women." Aside from the fact that such a statement should highlight that it's talking about averages, and individuals vary widely (for example, my cousin is taller than I am, silly mom and her short Chicago genes).

And that's just with height, which I chose because there's not many practical ways to alter it (I'm sure there's some horrific surgeries somewhere), and thus is a feature likely to reflect straight up genetics, as opposed to the possible societal influence on things like weight, muscle, agility, etc. which do have genetic components, but also have societal assumptions and influences muddying the data.

Kalmageddon
2013-10-17, 01:32 PM
The issue tends to come with people conflating various physical attributes with worth and overall capability.


We got a thread locked recently just because of that discussion, so let's try avoiding it this time.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-17, 01:43 PM
@Sith_Happens: depends. Are we talking of actual, verifiable controversies, or the other kind? :smallamused:

@JusticeZero & Segev: I feel Segev summarized the issue rather well. I believe it boils down to the pain treshold I mentioned earlier. In light of this, I'd like to propose a litmus test:

Is the thing in hand something unusual and not commonly/casually discussed? Then chances are it is personal and should be dropped.

Is it something equal to or milder than what a person would have to put up with in everyday life? Then the person better give additional justification or the thing stays.

What this thing is based on, is that other people should not be expected to censor themselves more than they do in normal public interactions. At least where I'm from, rules of discussion are relaxed amongst close associates, not tightened. The "I don't want to deal with this on my free time" argument cuts both ways. I personally hate walking on egg shells in private conversation, which I consider most RPGs to be.

Also, if someone is truly hurt real bad by common hot topics, it suggests a person is dysfunctional on some level. At that point, I consider it pretty much necessary to know what is up. It's on the same level as common food allergy, or asthma medication. My viewpoint here is that of someone organizing a mass event. If you are going to participate, then the organizer needs to know.

Black Jester
2013-10-17, 01:57 PM
I admit, in the case of alcohol at the game i would be horribly inconsequent. If one of my players asked me if we could play without alcohol at the table and that watching other people having a beer makes him unconfortable, i would probably agree to switch the mead or beer for tea without problem. If the same player would ask to having the player characters not drinking alcohol, i would probably disagree, pointing out that fictional drinks are, by their very nature, fictional. For me, there is a huge difference in quality between these two concerns.

NichG
2013-10-17, 01:58 PM
I don't think there's really a one-size-fits-all for how to deal with someone who has a strong discomfort for this or that topic, even excluding social-crusader-type situations. Because there isn't just one level of 'desire to play with this person/group'.

If you have a close group of friends who decide to play tabletop RPGs because its a fun group activity, then basically that external friendship is weighed against making a judgement call about how reasonable/unreasonable people are being. If you know your friend has issues with alcohol or abusive family or hell, circus clowns, then making that a focus of the game is not just risking that they leave the game but also risking that you damage your friendship with them. The game is fundamentally secondary to the external existing relationship.

On the far opposite side of the spectrum, if I want to go play something online with complete strangers, there's a lot less weight behind saying 'this game isn't for me, bye'. In the former case, thats excluding yourself from something that will be shared by the rest of your circle of friends and distancing yourself from them in general - its harming the friendship a little, even if your friends are understanding. In the case of an online game, no one will bat an eye - picking and choosing your games is a given in that environment.

So this also impacts what level of 'pushing the comfort zone' is going to be acceptable. If someone goes and advertises an online game because they want to run a specific scenario, then its reasonable for them to say 'if you have an issue with the things in this scenario, please do not join the game' because the scenario was their reason for engaging in the activity. And of course it may not be - it may be system testing or just 'I'm bored and my friends have exams' or whatever, in which case it makes sense to make compromises that strongly favor retaining players rather than retaining content.

And for other games in the middle of the two extremes - club games, games where you find players from a small pool of locals, etc, there are different levels of compromises that can be made, like the PG-13/PG rule, and there are also social expectations around the type of game.

For example, if I'm running a public anyone-can-join game at a gaming store, I would expect that its going to be entirely on me to make the game 'acceptable' to any random person who might want to join, because if some parent gets pissed off that I included this or that in the game and their kid who was browsing in the store could have overheard, that can cause trouble beyond just 'an uncomfortable player'.

Edit: Frozen Feet's point about local culture between friends vs strangers is also a good example about how the various 'right' degrees of compromise may vary a lot. Ostensibly if you're playing with friends, you know what you can joke with them about and what will really set them off.

refaderh
2013-10-17, 04:09 PM
Honestly, I think a lot of the armchair psychologists on the internet tend to judge people not on "wanting to play a sexist," but on whether they like settings that are hip to whatever social causes the armchair psychologists believe to be important. It's why we get people being offended when a situation is handled as anything other than the glowing paragon of virtue or the disgusting horrible evil that they believe it would be in the real world.

We tend, I think, to see more people accusing others of bigotry (and especially "soft" bigotry through whatever method the armchair psychologist has invented to "prove" that not doing it exactly how they want it done is actually unacknowledged bigotry) when said people's portrayal of something in a game doesn't match how those armchair psychologists believe it should be portrayed.

Have "usually evil" races? Obviously closet racism designed to pastiche real human skin colors and cultures, because the armchair psychologist says so. You have to do it THEIR way - whether that be "all races can be all things, and you can't make any educated guesses until you investigate the situation thoroughly each time" or "your good race had better recognize women as equal to men in all ways" or "your evil race can't have homosexuality as part of its culture because that's saying homosexuality is evil!" or even "your good race had better NOT treat women as identical to men, because no good race would put women on the front lines in a war!" - or YOU are a BAD PERSON because obviously not depicting it the way they would means you're supporting social injustice, or (on the other side, though that seems a lot rarer on the internet in RPG forums, in my experience) you're undermining the moral fabric of society by depicting good as bad and bad as good.

I do get very tired of social crusading. I don't like seeing it hidden in my games, settings, and fiction, but I'll generally accept it as long as my own takes and spins on things are respected. I REALLY don't like seeing it used to attack settings I like on the basis that not only is that setting and its writers promoting "soft bigotry" and "hate," but that anybody who likes it is either too stupid to see it or is a bad person, themselves (or, more likely, both) for not hating it just like the social crusaders do.

Ultimately, I think it is social crusading that causes these vitriolic problems. Your depiction of a fictional situation doesn't paint it in the good or bad light that somebody else feels the situation would represent in real life. Because of this, you are revealing that you are a bigot. After all, only a bigot would think good could come of [social injustice of choice]. And even denying that there is social injustice is proof that you're a bigot.

It's intollerance of perceived intollerance, and a will, nay, a delight in denying the legitimacy of anybody having views different from one's own. You have to like and accept everything they've deemed acceptable and laudible, or you are a bad person. You aren't just disagreeing with them, but actively - by not joining in their hatred of the object of ridicule - oppressing whoever they're crusading for. Often, themselves, in some way. And it can't ever be the reverse; they can't be oppressing you, because you're a bad person and bad people are the oppressors. Your opinion is evil and must be expunged. You can't be allowed to continue minding your own business because that's "soft" bigotry. All things - all role playing, all fiction - must reflect the social justice view of the speaker, because anything that doesn't is active oppression.



I guess what I'm saying is: if you don't like something in fiction, don't hate the people who do like it. Not everything is a social justice cause, and not everything you disagree with is reflective of psychological problems in those who believe it.

But we wind up with these arguments that become personal because fiction is rooted, one way or another, in our beliefs about the real world. So when we see fiction, say, that depicts Communist Russia as a utopia and the USA in the mid-1900s as a barren wasteland filled with greed and hate, those of us who feel that America had some awesome years in that period and that Communism is in fact a source of great evil when put into practice might be a bit offended. But at the same time, those who feel that America WAS (and maybe still is) a wasteland of greed and hate might feel anybody who decries that fiction as flawed is actually a bad person who is trying to justify greed and corruption.

Fiction is, too often, propaganda, and there are people who think that any fiction that isn't actively propagandizing for their social cause of choice is actively oppressing it.

Right you are. Awesome idea. I completely agree with you

JusticeZero
2013-10-17, 04:16 PM
Also, if someone is truly hurt real bad by common hot topics, it suggests a person is dysfunctional on some level. At that point, I consider it pretty much necessary to know what is up. It's on the same level as common food allergy, or asthma medication. My viewpoint here is that of someone organizing a mass event. If you are going to participate, then the organizer needs to know.
If I ask you to avoid something, that is exactly what I am doing. If you ask for an explanation, that is on par with the organizer saying "You say you are allergic to peanuts - but i'm not sure I believe you. Can you give an exact list of symptoms? A doctor's note? Can I do a skin test with a bit of peanut butter? I like walnuts, and I can't imagine anyone hating those. You should just get over yourself."

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-17, 04:27 PM
Once more, you're overthinking it. If you tell me to avoid peanut butter and I ask why, you tell it's because you're allergic.

Segev
2013-10-17, 04:44 PM
Yeah, pretty much. "Please avoid peanut butter; it makes me uncomfortable," is something I would ask the request-maker for more information on. If it's that he doesn't like peanut butter, I'll make sure there are non-peanut-butter options that are kept separate from the peanut better. If it's that he's allergic to it, I'll either leave it out entirely (for a small enough gathering) or will very clearly label the peanut butter laden offerings and keep them separated from the "peanut-free" offerings (also clearly labeled). If it's that he has some deep-seated emotional discomfort in its presence...well, that's...odd...I will probably want more information before I determine how or if I will incorporate or discorporate peanut butter.

Similarly, with "hot buttons" for a given person, I will want to know why. Is it that they have some personal history that it brings back memories to the fore of? That's probably enough, unless this is something integral to the planned game (in which case I might suggest this isn't the game for them). Is it just a dislike for certain plot twists? I'll talk to them about their comfort zone and how far they're willing to push it, and maybe make sure that it's not directed at them. But the key is talking to them. If they can't talk about it for some reason, then yeah, it may be something I leave out, or I may suggest this isn't the game for them if I feel I can't leave it out. Nothing personal; I wouldn't invite somebody who is scared to death of heights to go sky-diving with me, either. (Not that I've ever been sky-diving, but it was the first example I could think of.)

kyoryu
2013-10-17, 04:57 PM
Yeah, pretty much. "Please avoid peanut butter; it makes me uncomfortable," is something I would ask the request-maker for more information on.

The only real reason I'd ask is to make sure that I avoid them sufficiently - providing non-peanut-butter dishes is sufficient if someone just doesn't like peanut butter, but if they have allergies I may need to take additional precautions.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-17, 05:07 PM
While talking about hypothetical mental traumas and physical analogues is fun, I'd like to move back to RPGs. Because let's face it, while social hot topics and allergies are certainly an issue to a lot of people, many players get up in arms and judgemental about comparatively much sillier and pettier things.

Like their wizard having a spellbook stolen, or a mischievous rogue, or not being allowed to use their favorite build.

kyoryu
2013-10-17, 06:03 PM
Wizard having a spellbook stolen:

Usually, if someone is upset about this, it's because they didn't think such a thing would be possible, and it was. So this is a problem, fundamentally, of mismatched assumptions.

If you have assumptions (as a player or GM) about what will or won't happen in a game, you should make sure they're well known. This is doubly true if you're the GM, and the assumption in particular is that a certain bad thing might happen to players that may not be generally accepted or part of play.

If you notice that the game is heading in ways that seem counter to your assumptions, or if you notice a player is acting in a way that breaks your assumptions, bring it up, and explain what you're seeing, and what your assumptions are.

For instance, as a GM, if you expect that spellbooks should be able to be stolen, and you notice a player not taking any kind of precautions, this is a perfect time to mention it to the player that such a thing *can* happen, and that his mentor/whatever preached long and hard about the importance of securing spellbooks/having backups/etc. As a player, if you notice other players are taking effort to secure their spellbooks, and you're under the assumption that they can't be stolen, bring it up with the GM.

In the case that we get to the actual 'spellbook stolen' part without correcting the inappropriate assumptions, I think the first thing to do is to make the assumptions clear. As a GM, part of that should be including some of the things that can be done to secure spellbooks, ensure backups exist, etc. From there, if desired, the scene can either be retconned or (preferably) a way to minimize the damage quickly can be devised - generally with the explicit understanding that it's a one-time thing due to the misunderstanding.

From there, both parties know the assumptions and preferences of the other, and the long-term issue can be resolved. Either the GM can agree to no spellbook stealing, or the player can agree that it's possible. The player can also say that they just won't play a spellbook-dependent character, and play a martial character, or a sorceror, or some other type of character that doesn't actually rely on a spellbook.

In the worst case, if the ideas of what can or can't happen in a game just fully aren't compatible, the player and GM can agree that there's just not a match there.

One Step Two
2013-10-17, 06:30 PM
While talking about hypothetical mental traumas and physical analogues is fun, I'd like to move back to RPGs. Because let's face it, while social hot topics and allergies are certainly an issue to a lot of people, many players get up in arms and judgemental about comparatively much sillier and pettier things.

Like their wizard having a spellbook stolen, or a mischievous rogue, or not being allowed to use their favorite build.

With your latter example, I had a friend chat to me about this particular issue when it came up with his other gaming group.

The DM is running pathfinder with a few stringent set of character generation rules, something along the lines of, 28 point buy, no more than one stat at 10 or lower, no 3.5 materials, and a few other sundries that I can't recall immediately.
He was telling me how his previous character, a bard, was apparently the bane of this DM, and he felt he was being targeted unfairly. I sort of shrugged at that comment, and told him he was imagining it. Of course, when the bard was killed, he decided to just make a fighter, nothing too special, beyond taking battle-field control feats like Improved Bullrush, and Improved trip, just a plain old battle turtle. However, when he submitted the character, the DM rejected it without any thought, and gave him an entirely new Fighter to play, with wildly different stats, even going against his own char-gen rules and making the Int 10, and Cha 8. I told him his best bet was to sit down and chat to the guy.

It turned out that what the DM didn't want him to have, was ranks in speak language, diplomacy, and bluff. When considering that these are cross-class for fighters, he was of course confused, and the stat re-adjustment was to make the character bad at these things, dumping his cha and int.
The root cause was that the DM is relatively new to running games, no more than a year or so, and decided that since my friend was more experienced, about 5+ years of playing, that he was a power gamer, because he was trying to use social skills in a hack-n-slash game, which revealed that, yes he was targeting the bard unfairly specifically because of that.

I wont lie, in the sense that my friend is quite adept at building strong characters, the group we played in together, before he had to move to another state, was quite optimized and tended to difficult levels of play. He however knows when to tone it back, so when he was running his bard, he wasn't demanding things like Words of creation, or dragonfire inspiration, he was just aiming to be the party face. His style didn't mesh with the DM's playstyle ideas, and so, that sort of "off-the-wall" thinking made him judged as a power gamer.

The same goes for such things as stealing a wizard's spellbook, or sundering a Clerics' holy symbol. These are tactics that don't come up often because it is percieved as a violation of the character despite being an entirely legitimate tactic. I've had intellegent undead swipe a cleric's holy symbol because he was a Radiant servant of pelor, and knew the threats involved. The players were sufficently aghast when I did so, thus leading them to judge me, in that particular instance, as unfairly targeting them, despite the fact the cleric had been responsible for destroying 75% of the undead encountered due to his ridiculous turning check.

The problem with seeing these actions as being petty, is that they lack context, at the very least, they don't have the point of view of the person committing the act. The same way, as above, if someone says, "Hey guys, I don't like this topic, can we not?" It may seem odd and depending on the circumstances, seem entirely petty, or arbitrary. That's however not your place to say so. Presuming the person asking to avoid said topic is a friend, then you should avoid the topic. Likewise, they do need to give you a little background on why they want to avoid the topic, not just because most people tend to be naturally curious, but they need it to avoid subjects leading said topic if feasible.

And when it isn't feasible? Well, not to marginalise issues a player might have, but sometimes the game might dip that way. An explaination is needed, to see where the line is, what's the limit.
We need that context because we have to know, is it possible to allow a soft touch of it to make some encounters that little more memorable, for good or ill, or to make it that little bit more personally motivating. Do we need to strike it entirely from the game. Is that even possible?

kyoryu
2013-10-17, 07:06 PM
The same goes for such things as stealing a wizard's spellbook, or sundering a Clerics' holy symbol. These are tactics that don't come up often because it is percieved as a violation of the character despite being an entirely legitimate tactic.

By *some people*. Others would consider it completely expected, given that intelligent undead *should* recognize the threats that a cleric poses to them.

Neither side is right. Stealing a holy symbol is just a tactic, it's not a statement of disempowerment or anything else. Games where tactics like that are used are fine. Games where those tactics aren't used are fine.

What's important is to make sure everybody's on the same page about how the game that they're playing operates - and aren't just operating on assumptions that may not be shared by all members.

One Step Two
2013-10-17, 07:16 PM
By *some people*. Others would consider it completely expected, given that intelligent undead *should* recognize the threats that a cleric poses to them.

Neither side is right. Stealing a holy symbol is just a tactic, it's not a statement of disempowerment or anything else. Games where tactics like that are used are fine. Games where those tactics aren't used are fine.

What's important is to make sure everybody's on the same page about how the game that they're playing operates - and aren't just operating on assumptions that may not be shared by all members.

Oh, by all means you're right. There's that thing about context again. See, the group at large, when other members DM'd they tended towards ignoring clerics, because they were healbots. Wizards were open to having their spellbook stolen, it didn't happen often, but it happened enough that those that played wizards displayed care. The cleric player is often our healer, he likes playing the support character. But as soon as he made himself become offensive, well, counter-measures had to be made. So, for that particular instance, it was a total shock. He actually was quite reproachful when it happened, as were some of the group. The others that wanted to smash zombies, weren't.

Just to lead back to my above post, he judged me as unfairly attacking him. Untill I sat down and explained, that in an 8 person group, he was utterly shredding encounters, and leaving everyone else to sit on their thumbs. I explained I had no problems with him using his turn-checks in that way, but that the necromancer who was running the show, so-to-speak, wasn't going to take it lying down. I pointed out there was a cantrip to summon a holy symbol, and besides the increasing numbers of unhallowed areas, and bolsters to support my undead masses, him paying a one turn tax if he has been deprived his Holy symbol is a small price to pay to keep the encounters interesting for the rest of the group.

Scow2
2013-10-17, 07:38 PM
Which is why a properly-prepared cleric uses his Shield as a holy symbol - which can't be disarmed because it's strapped to the arm!

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-18, 01:15 AM
@Scow2: you dirty powergamer. :smallamused:

@Kyoryu: I agree with most of what you've said, but have a word on how to apply it to practice. I'd like to introduce a principle of decision-making: "No punishment without crime, and no crime without a law that defines it."

One thing to keep in mind: we all agree some level of discussion should take place before a game. So the following takes it as given that the system used and genre of the game have already been made clear.

In context of RPGs, this means that unless something is explicitly against the rules, then it is fair game. This why the player who takes issue to his spellbook being stolen is either ignorant or disingenuous. D&D has rules for stealing equipment, and no rule that absolutely exempts spellbooks (or holy symbols, or phylacteries) from being stolen. All the GM is obliged to do is point out there is, in fact, no rule protecting his spellbook. If the player keeps making a fuzz about it, he is being a sore loser. Especially if he's disrupting the game with it - rules issues of this level are discussed after the game.

But the GM is held to the same standard. The GM who took issue with the bard was guilty of similarly fallacious judgement - D&D has rule for social skills, and if those rules aren't explicitly removed from use, they are fair game. He was punishing his player for an imagined slight.

Now, RPG rulesets tend to be incomplete and have a great deal of grey areas. But RPGs have invented a lot of methods to deal with this during the years. Like:
Adherence to reality: if there is a rule contradiction, what would happen in real life is used to solve it.
Adherence to law: when a social conflict goes outside rules of a game, actual law of the land is used to solve it.
Random chance: dice, coin tosses etc. are used as a neutral party to decide whose vision takes hold.
GM has final word: when all else fails, one player's word takes precedence above all others.
Voting: players vote on the conflict, and opinion of the majority takes hold.


There are a lot of ways to move on in a game that don't involve in-depth discussion of rules during a game. The problem is that many of these methods have lost respect. People are flat-out unwillign to obey the dice, or obey their GM. A lot of people here espouse strong anti-authoritarian views, which obviously causes problems when most RPGs are by nature authoritarian. The problem is that one or more players are approaching the situation from conflicting premises.

AMFV
2013-10-18, 01:26 AM
Generally stealing a wizard's spellbook reduces him to absolutely being unable to participate for at least one session. That's a pretty shady move by any stretch. Furthermore once you start down that road, you're no longer providing challenges that are fair, you're targeting one player.

Tactical sense in RPGs only goes so far, you are the DM, you inherently the characters capabilities, tactically if you use all of your knowledge, you literally CANNOT lose, it's the Tucker's Kobold's problem, you're omniscient, they're not. Your goal should be that they perceive threats and risk, not beating them, since that'd be like playing poker while knowing everybody's cards.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-18, 07:40 AM
"Absolutely unable to participate", save for scrolls, potions and other equipment they may have left, spells they have remaining in memory, buffs and spells that are still active, Ex, Sp & Su abilities they might have, skills, feats, shooting things with a crossbow, hitting things with a sword...

Your gripe rests on a hyperbole that is easy to put into question.

Now, you have a better point with GM's narrative omniscience. But this problem is easy to solve: don't play as GM against the players, play as characters against player characters. The GM doesn't have to be antagonistic towards his players, but it is his job to play antagonists against their characters. To use a Chess analogy, GM is the black player while players are the white player.

The key is for a GM to 1) establish forces in his command and 2) play them according to rules. A GM is only unwinnable if he arbitrarily gives himself more game pieces, or plain cheats by ignoring die rolls or player actions. A GM can certainly do so, but he doesn't have to. The option to do so also doesn't have to be allowed for him: one aspect of random generation and encounters is that they restrict GM power.

AMFV
2013-10-18, 01:29 PM
"Absolutely unable to participate", save for scrolls, potions and other equipment they may have left, spells they have remaining in memory, buffs and spells that are still active, Ex, Sp & Su abilities they might have, skills, feats, shooting things with a crossbow, hitting things with a sword...

Your gripe rests on a hyperbole that is easy to put into question.


If I cannot participate more than a commoner that managed to get UMD as a class skill that's going to be a crappy day for me. Generally the stealing spellbook scenario occurs when the character is sleeping, hence the total degree of valuelessness.

Frankly, you may call it a griping whine, but if I'm not having fun, I won't play. I have enough stress in real life without having to have to deal with things I don't want to in not real life. As a wizard I want to be able to cast spells, that's why I play a wizard, as an undead turning cleric I want to be able to turn undead. Taking that away from me, without talking to me about it first and getting my approval is taking away the thing that I am enjoying in the game. If I don't enjoy I don't play.


Now, you have a better point with GM's narrative omniscience. But this problem is easy to solve: don't play as GM against the players, play as characters against player characters. The GM doesn't have to be antagonistic towards his players, but it is his job to play antagonists against their characters. To use a Chess analogy, GM is the black player while players are the white player.

The key is for a GM to 1) establish forces in his command and 2) play them according to rules. A GM is only unwinnable if he arbitrarily gives himself more game pieces, or plain cheats by ignoring die rolls or player actions. A GM can certainly do so, but he doesn't have to. The option to do so also doesn't have to be allowed for him: one aspect of random generation and encounters is that they restrict GM power.


The problem is that when the DM is playing the OpFor as a serious challenge he has too much knowledge to be able to avoid metagaming, if you are viewing it as competitive combat, it is likely impossible to avoid metagaming.

In my experience, and this might be me, the best way is to look at it not as a strategic or tactical moment but as a narrative one. What are you trying to accomplish narratively with the combat? That can drive encounters, and can help you figure out how difficult to make them, certain encounters should be impossibly tough, others should be easy it's all about pacing.

If you're competing directly with your players even using random generators you still have an unfair advantage, it's not two players competing, it's the narrator fighting with a character, and that never ends well for one party.

kyoryu
2013-10-18, 01:30 PM
In context of RPGs, this means that unless something is explicitly against the rules, then it is fair game. This why the player who takes issue to his spellbook being stolen is either ignorant or disingenuous. D&D has rules for stealing equipment, and no rule that absolutely exempts spellbooks (or holy symbols, or phylacteries) from being stolen. All the GM is obliged to do is point out there is, in fact, no rule protecting his spellbook. If the player keeps making a fuzz about it, he is being a sore loser. Especially if he's disrupting the game with it - rules issues of this level are discussed after the game.

I don't agree. Many players play in games where spellbooks aren't stolen - if a player comes to a new game and his spellbook is targeted, he's gonna be upset.

This doesn't make the GM right and the player wrong, or vice versa. It means that there's a mismatch of expectations that needs to be cleared up. There's a fuzzy area between 'rules' and 'assumptions' that falls within that grey social contract area.

If the goal is to have a fun game for everyone, when it becomes obvious that there's such a mismatch, just telling the player "dude, there's no rule against it" isn't a great strategy. Minimizing the impact (on a one-time basis), and explaining to the player that yes, this *can* happen, and *will* happen in the future, and here's what can be done about it, are good ways to more productively get people on the same page.

I'm also not saying that this needs to happen *right then* during the game.

But your assumption that anything that's legal is fair game is just that - an assumption. And there's a lot of people that *don't* play with that assumption. I don't see it as a matter of "right" and "wrong" so much as just getting everyone on the same page.



Frankly, you may call it a griping whine, but if I'm not having fun, I won't play. I have enough stress in real life without having to have to deal with things I don't want to in not real life. As a wizard I want to be able to cast spells, that's why I play a wizard, as an undead turning cleric I want to be able to turn undead. Taking that away from me, without talking to me about it first and getting my approval is taking away the thing that I am enjoying in the game. If I don't enjoy I don't play.

This is key, and part of the reason I talk about preferences being okay without needing to back them up with some kind of principle in my other post.

If we talk about principles like "don't disempower characters" or "things that are legal are legal", we'll be here all day. If we just acknowledge that you don't like games where spellbooks/holy symbols can be stolen, and Frozen_Feet does, then there's no real argument any more. If you want to play in a game that Frozen_Feet runs, you either agree to that, or he agrees to not use that element, or you don't play together.

Neither of you are right or wrong for your preferences. They're just not compatible.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-18, 02:10 PM
@AMFV: Oh, your character most certainly is reduced in effectiveness. "Absolutely unable to participate" is and remains a hyperbole, though. My gripe is not with you having a gripe; it's with the hyperbole. Such make for disingenious arguments.

@Kyoruy: the whole point of outlining and internalizing the principle I mentioned is to stop players from getting upset by stupid things, and to make them voice their opinions when it is least disruptive. Unstated "gentlemen's agreements" need to die in fire - either they are made into real rules, or they are ignored. "When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me"; it is not polite to feel entitled to a "fair game" if your concept of fair is not visible anywhere. As has been stated repeatedly, people can't read thoughts. False assumptions are not a grey area; at least where I'm from, if you make a false assumption, the joke is on you, and unless you have proof of intentional deception, it is you who made a mistake.

AMFV
2013-10-18, 02:23 PM
@AMFV: Oh, your character most certainly is reduced in effectiveness. "Absolutely unable to participate" is and remains a hyperbole, though. My gripe is not with you having a gripe; it's with the hyperbole. Such make for disingenious arguments.

@Kyoruy: the whole point of outlining and internalizing the principle I mentioned is to stop players from getting upset by stupid things, and to make them voice their opinions when it is least disruptive. Unstated "gentlemen's agreements" need to die in fire - either they are made into real rules, or they are ignored. "When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me"; it is not polite to feel entitled to a "fair game" if your concept of fair is not visible anywhere. As has been stated repeatedly, people can't read thoughts. False assumptions are not a grey area; at least where I'm from, if you make a false assumption, the joke is on you, and unless you have proof of intentional deception, it is you who made a mistake.

I think we have found the source of the troubles. I, like Kyoruy am fond of gentleman's agreements and unwritten rules. In my opinion there are fundamental social rules which generally are not stated. And it is completely fair for me to expect that of others, provided that the rules are generally agreed on.

Social unwritten rules tend to have fairly good consensus between groups and blanket invalidating them is probably not a good thing. They work for many many groups and many many people. Frankly if I feel that other people are trampling all over my expectations of the rules, and my expectations of having fun, I will take my fun elsewhere.

Furthermore, to answer your first point, "Completely useless," is not an objective statement, it's a subjective one, so for me shooting a crossbow in combat is a total waste of time. Using scrolls is a waste of experience and generally a bad time. So for me, when playing an arcane caster if you take away a spellbook it becomes useless.

More importantly it removes the reason I'm playing and enjoying the character if I can't use my spells, why would I play a caster, basically it turns into a game of paranoia where I take obsessive protections of my spellbook, by tenth level or so, you can get to where the only way you can take it is by fiat, but by having to set those up, we've wasted everybody else's time. It's much better to simply acknowledge that you don't strip other people of their enjoyment of the game without having a lengthy talk about it beforehand.

Karkos
2013-10-18, 02:30 PM
Heaven forbid you ever meet a transexual. If it wasn't for the fact I'm too busy laughing my rear off at how over the top and offensive this statement is, to the point I'm almost sure it's a poe's law joke, I'd probably have a 7 paragraph rant.

Hell you want to know why I actually started playing female characters? We started writing our own settings and having continuity, and I realized that having every heroic party in the setting be all-male would have bad implications so I took on the role of the girl.

Of course later I discovered my trans side, and well. Here I am now.

Although just a question.

If having those 'issues' is what a male characters playing girls imply. What would you say a female character who always plays men would imply?

Or do you have no answer for this, and are just being misandrist?

Morithias, I think you're reading waaaaaay too much into my response.

I've never DMed for a transsexual and that obviously a would be a special case in which I would probably let them play the opposite gender.

As for letting women play male PC's, no, I would not let it happen.

That's just me though. I found it lead to too many stereotypical takes on the opposite sex (male players playing their female PC's as complete sluts) and uncomfortable situations.

Karkos
2013-10-18, 02:32 PM
I see passive aggression, assertion of moral superiority over somebody who might possibly disagree with you, and your own potential bigotry at calling these 'issues' out as bad things that the person whom you are addressing is morally wrong for drawing conclusions on.

Impressive demonstration.

Thanks for backing me up, Segev.

Karkos
2013-10-18, 02:40 PM
Considering the statement he made was one of the most clearly offensive things I've ever read. I would actually consider him a bigot. I'm just curious what kind.

"Males who play females have mommy issues and want to be beaten."

My god that's offensive to transexuals, females, and males. It implies that male to female transexuals are mentally ill people, it implies that females are inherently weaker and that femininity is a form of weaken or wanting to be abused, and it implies that a male who is feminine in anyway or willing to explore such is somehow mentally weaker than the testosterone poisoned 'manly men'. Since roleplaying has nothing to do with physical activity obviously.

I really have half a mind to report the post. It seriously comes across like if someone said "A white person who constantly plays black people, dreams of raping people and committing crimes while claiming to be discriminated against if ever called on doing anything wrong."

It's a claim that is offensive and untrue on basically every level.

Like I said, I never considered transsexuals because I've never met one. Gamed with a couple gay people over the years.

I don't have the endurance to argue anymore. Report me if you want.

kyoryu
2013-10-18, 04:22 PM
@Kyoruy: the whole point of outlining and internalizing the principle I mentioned

And if that's how you're going to play, I think that making that explicit to new players is a *fantastic* idea. I usually have similar speeches with players before starting any new game, or when taking on new players.


is to stop players from getting upset by stupid things

I think this is not a helpful view. It's probably more accurate to say "to stop players from getting upset by things I think are stupid", as if someone is upset by something, that's usually a good sign that *they* don't think it's stupid.


and to make them voice their opinions when it is least disruptive.

Again, an excellent point, and why there definitely should be guidelines of what a game is and is not that are communicated.


Unstated "gentlemen's agreements" need to die in fire - either they are made into real rules, or they are ignored.

Unstated, yes. Gentleman's agreements - I disagree. Mostly because I don't think that all things can effectively be made into strict rules, and many things nobody cares enough about to bother with.

Things I've had people get upset about in games in the past:

- Amount of treasure received
- Amount of 'plot' in the game
- Amount of xp gained per session

These are things that need to be communicated, but I don't know that they're things that need hardcore 'rules' on.


"When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me"; it is not polite to feel entitled to a "fair game" if your concept of fair is not visible anywhere.

The problem with assumptions is that we all make them - and usually we're unaware of the fact.

If I throw an ancient red dragon at the village tavern when everyone is sleeping, it will likely kill their characters. I know of no rule preventing a GM from doing that. I also don't know that one is necessary, or that it could be formalized sufficiently to prevent **** behavior while still allowing sufficient GM latitude.

If I really want to play something that nailed down, I'll play Descent: Journeys In The Dark.


As has been stated repeatedly, people can't read thoughts. False assumptions are not a grey area; at least where I'm from, if you make a false assumption, the joke is on you, and unless you have proof of intentional deception, it is you who made a mistake.

Most cases that I've seen, especially with RPGs, the problem is *conflicting* assumptions, not necessarily *false* ones. If you think that spellbooks should be stealable, and someone else doesn't, that doesn't make one assumption correct and the other incorrect. It just means that you're operating under different assumptions. I generally find it more useful to look at things as preferences and assumptions, rather than "wrong" and "right", as it helps to find common ground or at least agreement.

Looking at things from the perspective of "getting upset about stupid things", that they're "sore losers", and "the joke's on you" doesn't really promote that kind of communication, in my experience.

I mean, look, I'm with you on the spellbook/holy symbol thing. As far as I can tell, they exist to be stolen - as in, if they weren't meant to be stolen, the rules wouldn't call them out as physical items. But if a player gets upset about it happening, I'm going to try and approach the situation from the viewpoint that they probably have played in games where that *didn't* happen, and so it violated an unstated expectation on their part, and work towards resolving it from that perspective.

That doesn't mean I'm going to say "okay, spellbooks can't be stolen." And it may be that the player will decide they don't want to play in that game, and that's fine. But hopefully at least they'll be willing to play with me in other games in the future, that *don't* feature things like the possibility of spellbooks being stolen.

Lorsa
2013-10-18, 06:27 PM
That's just me though. I found it lead to too many stereotypical takes on the opposite sex (male players playing their female PC's as complete sluts) and uncomfortable situations.

Is the stereotype that women are sluts or that male players play the female characters as such?

Karkos
2013-10-18, 06:57 PM
Is the stereotype that women are sluts or that male players play the female characters as such?

*facepalm*

Are you trolling me or serious?

For what very little it's obviously worth my initial post came out with more "blanket terms" than I would have liked. If I could go back in time and tweak it slightly I would, but you can't unring a bell. My basic OPINION still holds.

When it comes down to it I don't let straight/gay men or women play the opposite sex when I DM. When I'm a player people can do whatever the hell they want.

Morithias about had a seizure because I included transexuals under the gay umbrella. I'm truly sorry, Morithias.

Scow2
2013-10-18, 07:44 PM
Furthermore, to answer your first point, "Completely useless," is not an objective statement, it's a subjective one, so for me shooting a crossbow in combat is a total waste of time. Using scrolls is a waste of experience and generally a bad time. So for me, when playing an arcane caster if you take away a spellbook it becomes useless. ... Are you one of Talakeal's players? I think I've heard of you.

TuggyNE
2013-10-18, 08:15 PM
Unstated, yes. Gentleman's agreements - I disagree. Mostly because I don't think that all things can effectively be made into strict rules, and many things nobody cares enough about to bother with.
[…]
If I throw an ancient red dragon at the village tavern when everyone is sleeping, it will likely kill their characters. I know of no rule preventing a GM from doing that. I also don't know that one is necessary, or that it could be formalized sufficiently to prevent **** behavior while still allowing sufficient GM latitude.

How about this formulation? "Suddenly red dragons" breaches iii pretty hard, since it's not dynamic, not active, not engaging, and effectively removes not just one but all of the characters from the entire combat (since, chances are, none of them will act before being incinerated).

Mr Beer
2013-10-18, 08:29 PM
When it comes down to it I don't let straight/gay men or women play the opposite sex when I DM. When I'm a player people can do whatever the hell they want.

Seems unusually restrictive, you must have had some really bad experiences to make this rule.

Mr Beer
2013-10-18, 08:33 PM
Furthermore, to answer your first point, "Completely useless," is not an objective statement, it's a subjective one, so for me shooting a crossbow in combat is a total waste of time. Using scrolls is a waste of experience and generally a bad time. So for me, when playing an arcane caster if you take away a spellbook it becomes useless.

"completely useless" does not mean "sub-optimal".

Morithias
2013-10-18, 10:36 PM
Male characters play female character as sluts....

*sighs*

Get the popcorn because this is going to be so long it's probably going to hit the post limit. Let's talk about Zeth.

Zeth was a campaign that me and two male friends wrote that ultimately ended up less as the war campaign it was suppose to be and more a series of philosophical debates. The main one being "what is evil".

Let's go over the female characters.

1. Jebel the Harvest Devil.

Dangerously genre savvy and having spend years of interviews and research in baator after meeting the First Evil and creating the plan to make a new god of evil. Jebel is ultimately the result of the question being asked "why does realistic fiction never exist in non realistic fiction." Aka Why has no one in Mass Effect seen Star Wars, why has no one in Harry Potter read Lords of the rings and so on. By studying the tyrants that have died and gone to hell she comes to the conclusion that many of them fell because they were 'unable to see the big picture'.

2. Alexis

The Princess turned Empress that Jebel raised from birth. Given extraordinary beauty by the First Evil, an Elder God that could make Cthulhu kneel before him. Raised by Jebel and trained in the art of pragmatism she has come to the conclusion that if she keeps her people content and happy, they will not rebel against her, letting her work on gaining immortality and rule Zeth forever.

3. Sill

The slave of the black Knight general. Despite him legally not owning her due to the Stratos Empire not allowing slavery, she sticks by the general due to the fact he saved her from a fate worse than death. Despite being endlessly told that slavery is always an act of evil, the fact that she is happy being one and asks Alexis to not push the subject causes Alexis to question what defines evil.

Her logic goes as follows.

1. I've always been told slavery is always evil.
2. I've met a slave that is happy being one.
3. If she is happy being one, does her happiness mean it is not evil since it is not causing her to suffer. Is there an exception to the rule?
4. If I do not understand this exception, I do not understand evil as a whole.

She then goes into this.

1. The First Evil is the embodiment of pure evil.
2. Therefore 'Pure Evil' can be defined.
3. From birth she has been raised by Jebel to serve evil.
4. She doesn't understand evil.
5. How can she serve something she does not understand?

This leads her to seriously question "what is evil". Not in the terms of the way that most villains do. Most of the time when a villain goes "what is evil" it's a strawman question used to give a weak debate to the hero "from my point of view the jedi are evil" anyone? No Alexis actually wants to define what makes a person evil.

Is it the action? Is it the motivation? At what point does wisdom become good, and stupidity become bad.

Consider this scenario.

The Weather Wizard from the DC universe is motivated by Greed. Which most consider to be an evil motivation. He invents a weather control machine, and figures out he has two options.

1. Hold Metropolis hostage for 100 million. Knowing that superman will likely try to stop him.

or

2. Patent the machine and sell it's services for good. Ideal crop conditions, ending doughts, making sure it doesn't rain on festivals, stopping hurricanes. He'd be rolling in cash Mcduck style, and superman won't show up and ruin everything.

Realizing that he will make more money with action 2, he does the "good" action and patents the machine and uses it for the benefit of mankind.

HOWEVER.

His motivation is still nothing but greed. He isn't doing the good action because it's the right thing, he's doing it because it makes him more money than action A at less risk.

Does him being wise enough to not do the extortion and damage causing action A, make him good or at least neutral, even though his motivation is still evil in nature?

This is the moral debate that Jebel and Alexis endlessly have. Don't see any 'slut' here.

Other characters in Zeth's war.

Leila and Carol. Amazon Cavalier and Tiefling Musketeer.

They have a debate about what qualifies as 'propaganda' and 'child soldiers'. In essence debating nature versus nurture, if a child is raised in a military family and therefore joins the military themselves, are they a child soldier brainwashed by the militarist propaganda their parents gave them in their upbringing? After all, if the child had been born a farmer, he'd likely be a farmer, a blacksmith a blacksmith and so on.

No 'slut' here. In fact Carol is heavily against sex, seeing it as a meaningless distraction to her musket training. Being a child soldier raised by a cult of Dispater and all.

Minax and Aya.

Along with Jebel these 2 create a 3 person debate on "what defines gender".

Minax is a male changeling, raised in the drow lands, who from being raised in a matriarchal society has feminine ideals and identifies as female. Often staying in a female body.

Aya is a female changeling as is the rumormonger/propagandist of Stratos Empire. To do this she is a 'becomer' changling. Adopting dozens of various identities, some female, some male, all equally real to her.

Minax is male in his true body, female in his mind, and spends most of his time in a female body.

Aya is female in her true body, but is asexual in her mind, and spends equal amounts of time in both male and female bodies.

Which one of them is more female?

The twist with Zeth is that every single character except for Sill. Is Evil.

All of these philosophical and moral debate are being done from a villain's point of view. Neither side is arguing for the 'moral ideals of good', but rather from a view point of ruthless villains who simply have high intelligence and wisdom scores.

So of course, 3 people who are physically male. 2 who are NOT transexuals but straight men. Cannot write female characters except for sluts.

I mean it's only a bloody campaign that revolves around philosophical debates. Of course the women are sluts! Don't you know that sluts love philosophy and debating the great questions of the universe as a whole?!

and that's not getting into the questions like "what makes a war just", or the "transhumanist" arguments that Sabrina the artificer and Vahlen the Flesh-warper get into.

Scow2
2013-10-18, 10:43 PM
-snipping indignant rant-The point he was making was that, in his groups and experiences, the males he had allowed to play females DID play them as sluts, and it got so bad that he's made a blanket ban on cross-playing with him so he doesn't have to put up with any of it, and it has saved him from trouble he was demonstrably and undeniably having. This world and hobby are NOT "One Size Fits All"

YOU have been lucky enough to have groups where cross-playing didn't invariably devolve into fetishizing the characters. He has not.

Morithias
2013-10-18, 10:44 PM
The point he was making was that, in his groups and experiences, the males he had allowed to play females DID play them as sluts, and it got so bad that he's made a blanket ban on cross-playing with him so he doesn't have to put up with any of it, and it has saved him from trouble he was demonstrably and undeniably having. This world and hobby are NOT "One Size Fits All"

And yet by using the blanket ban he IS treating it as "One Size Fits All".




YOU have been lucky enough to have groups where cross-playing didn't invariably devolve into fetishizing the characters. He has not.

Probably because we actually allowed that if it fit the campaign. We realized that tropes are tools, and that (despite what tvtropes might say), includes sex tropes.

We didn't just go "SEX BAD BAN FOREVER NO MATTER WHAT!"

Scow2
2013-10-18, 10:47 PM
And yet by using the blanket ban he IS treating it as "One Size Fits All".For those in his local area. You have had groups who can respectfully cross-play. He has made it clear he has had enough experiences with it going wrong that he'd rather upfront limit his players than suffer through yet-another-Chainmail Bikini.

Morithias
2013-10-18, 10:49 PM
For those in his local area. You have had groups who can respectfully cross-play. He has made it clear he has had enough experiences with it going wrong that he'd rather upfront limit his players than suffer through yet-another-Chainmail Bikini.

And what happens when the Chainmail bikini is justified? Battledancer? Character with the fire-subtype? Thrall of Malachant?

Exediron
2013-10-18, 11:27 PM
And what happens when the Chainmail bikini is justified? Battledancer? Character with the fire-subtype? Thrall of Malachant?

I think you're arguing the wrong argument here... The argument it sounds like you're making is "Yes, male players do play their female characters as sluts - but that's okay!". As a male player who plays a lot of female characters, I'd prefer to see more of a "No, many male players do not play their female characters as sluts!"

Honestly, I find this opinion rather insulting, and in my personal experience pretty baseless. Sure, I've played some promiscuous female characters - and male characters, and maybe one or two who were neither. I've played asexual characters, repressed characters, plenty of perfectly normal heterosexual characters with healthy relationships, characters who have an orientation but don't think about it, professionals who think attraction has no place on the battlefield, etc.

Most of the male players I know shy away from playing female characters; partly because they're not comfortable with it, but I suspect mostly because they're not comfortable with the silly preconceived notions everyone else is going to have about how they'll play their character. In contrast, the female players I know don't necessarily play their male characters any better, but they get a lot less judgment for it. If a female player decides she wants a big strapping gunslinger whose idea of an ideal end to the day is some grog and a good lass on his lap nobody rails against her outdated and incorrect view on men - they're more likely to think it's funny, which is probably annoying to her in its own right, but is still a pretty pathetic double standard.

To summarize, I think there's nothing wrong with this so-called 'crossplaying', and quite a lot wrong with forcing people to play a character of their same sex. You don't force people to play only humans, do you? (Don't answer that if you do...)

Morithias
2013-10-18, 11:31 PM
I think you're arguing the wrong argument here... The argument it sounds like you're making is "Yes, male players do play their female characters as sluts - but that's okay!". As a male player who plays a lot of female characters, I'd prefer to see more of a "No, many male players do not play their female characters as sluts!"

No I'm arguing there's a time and place for everything. And yes, that includes sexual campaigns and adventures. In my opinion saying "Players should never played sexualized characters." Makes about as much sense as saying. "Anything above a Pg-13 rating should never be produced or made if it has sexual content."

It varies from group to group, but the idea that it's just automatically always wrong strikes me as well...anti-creative. It makes about as much sense as saying "You can't play a character with blonde hair." or "You can't play a character who uses a ranged weapon."

Tropes are tools. And everything, including sex, has it's place in media.

Scow2
2013-10-18, 11:37 PM
This is what I meant by Chainmail Bikini (http://shawntionary.com/chainmailbikini/?p=26)

Morithias
2013-10-18, 11:48 PM
This is what I meant by Chainmail Bikini (http://shawntionary.com/chainmailbikini/?p=26)

Ah.

Here is how I define it.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChainmailBikini

Aka I don't care what gender plays it.

Broken Twin
2013-10-19, 12:47 AM
I do think that prolonged exposure to another person's roleplay does help you determine stuff about them, but it's nothing that can really be extrapolated on without exposure to the person in other environments. Any extended interaction with someone helps you understand a fraction of their mental framework, but if you only ever see them in one setting (pen and paper gaming, in this case), you'll only have guesses as to how the three puzzle pieces you've uncovered fit into the 100 piece picture.

Also, there's the difference between how they roleplay and what they roleplay. Both have merit, but it's not something that can be determined in one session, or even one campaign. If you explore a wide variety of character concepts and viewpoints, then I'm probably going to conclude that you're a rather open minded individual who can have neutral conversations on sensitive topics. If every character you play somehow has an irrational hatred of say, cats, then it's a relatively safe bet that the player is not a cat person.

tasw
2013-10-19, 02:40 AM
No I'm arguing there's a time and place for everything. And yes, that includes sexual campaigns and adventures. In my opinion saying "Players should never played sexualized characters." Makes about as much sense as saying. "Anything above a Pg-13 rating should never be produced or made if it has sexual content.".

The only time i have for sexualized roleplaying is alone with my SO. Other then that I want all my players, of both genders, to keep that crap to themselves and the 99 cent a minute lines.

Because the problem with sexualized RP is that its not a solitary exercise, someone has to do it with you. And in all the groups I've been part of since highschool theres only two times people have actually wanted to do that.

1. Actual couples RPing together. Which just gets obnoxious to everyone else at the table after a while.

2. People who want to be a couple, but arent quite there yet and are using the game as a way to flirt. Which gets obnoxious just slightly slower then 1.

Black Jester
2013-10-19, 03:01 AM
Romanticism and the like (and the line what is considered romantic or sexual is incredible blurry and nigh impossible to define on a non-individual level) are one of the standard forms of entertainment in pretty much any genre for a reason. Excluding it from a game (and I am not talking about mental porn here, just harmless flirting or other form of romance) is the willfully ignorance of a very useful tool to motivate, stipulate and establish a moot and a relationship between characters and seems incredibly prudish (and rather dull) to me.

Lorsa
2013-10-19, 03:59 AM
*facepalm*

Are you trolling me or serious?

For what very little it's obviously worth my initial post came out with more "blanket terms" than I would have liked. If I could go back in time and tweak it slightly I would, but you can't unring a bell. My basic OPINION still holds.

When it comes down to it I don't let straight/gay men or women play the opposite sex when I DM. When I'm a player people can do whatever the hell they want.

Morithias about had a seizure because I included transexuals under the gay umbrella. I'm truly sorry, Morithias.

As kyoryu said, your preferences are your preferences and you are allowed to have them. I was actually just wondering what you considered the stereotype to be as it wasn't clear from your post when you said "stereotypical depiction of female PCs" or somesuch.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-19, 07:15 AM
Most cases that I've seen, especially with RPGs, the problem is *conflicting* assumptions, not necessarily *false* ones.

Well, if we're talking about two equally right (or wrong) arguments, the matter becomes pragmatic and that of conflict resolution. This loops back to the brief list I made. The problem appears again when people disagree on the method of resolution due to false assumptions, and from there it goes around in circles, so I think we can leave that to another day.

If we want to get cynical about it, when a game turns into Calvinball, the ultimate resolution method is Law of Hobbes, also known as adherence to martial arts. Namely, it's "you maybe right, but I'm still a tiger will eat your face". :smallamused:

Though I dislike using blackmail, threatening and bribery when dealing with adults. I mean, we're all mature enough to avoid such stuff, right? I'd rather reserve those just for when I have to deal with kids. :smalltongue:

Morithias
2013-10-19, 09:58 AM
Romanticism and the like (and the line what is considered romantic or sexual is incredible blurry and nigh impossible to define on a non-individual level) are one of the standard forms of entertainment in pretty much any genre for a reason. Excluding it from a game (and I am not talking about mental porn here, just harmless flirting or other form of romance) is the willfully ignorance of a very useful tool to motivate, stipulate and establish a moot and a relationship between characters and seems incredibly prudish (and rather dull) to me.

I once recalled a "theoretical" campaign. That revolved around a world where such a DM existed.

We argued that "If you offer a knight the princess's hand in marriage to rescue her. Without any concept of romance he would either refuse (leaving her to her fate), and if railroaded into it. Cut off her hand Dwarf-who-tricked-Loki style, leaving her to die in the wild."

Argue all you will about the knight-princess thing being sexist. I would love to meet the woman who would rather be sacrificed on an altar to a dark god than marry some brave handsome knight-in-shining armor, who not even knowing her went out of his way to rescue her.

Hell there are even ways to play with that. They could fall in love on the way back (Shrek), it could be a knight and prince instead of princess. The knight could argue that he doesn't want her hand and is rescuing her cause it's the right thing to do, as a Paladin should.

Remove any kind of romantic feeling and you reduce basically every woman in anything resembling a stereotypical medieval society into a produce. A creature to be given away in an arranged marriage and then chained to the stove to produce children.

Because without romance, I fail to see why the average male would WANT to be married. Even in real life (the courts are VERY biased against men when it comes to child support, marriage, divorce, etc).

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-19, 10:17 AM
Morithias: there are very simple, pragmatic reasons for a man to marry outside any considerations of romance:

One, to have kids in the first place. Second, to ensure line of inheritance for those kids. Third, to have even some legal say about what happens to his kids.

Usually, men can't give birth themselves. They need a woman for it. The desire to have kids is strong enough to make people jump through some very questionable loops, both in real life and fantasy, men and women both.

Morithias
2013-10-19, 11:07 AM
Morithias: there are very simple, pragmatic reasons for a man to marry outside any considerations of romance:

One, to have kids in the first place. Second, to ensure line of inheritance for those kids. Third, to have even some legal say about what happens to his kids.

Usually, men can't give birth themselves. They need a woman for it. The desire to have kids is strong enough to make people jump through some very questionable loops, both in real life and fantasy, men and women both.

1. Kids are quite frankly worthless to anyone who doesn't care about extending their family line. I'm pretty sure if you did the math, having a child costs you more money than not having one.

2. Line of inheritance. What do I care about a line of inheritance? I'm going to be dead!

3. Legal say about what happens to the kids I don't plan to have, due to reason 1.

Quite frankly if I wanted a child I'd just as soon adopt one or build a robot or something. Rather than jump through endless legal hoops, all that are against me.

One of mentors (who was a girl I might point out), said. "Marriage is the stupidest thing a higher income person can do. Once someone has something to gain from the failure of a relationship (money for instance), they will subconsciously work against it. Any lower income person who demands marriage is either doesn't understand economics and is brainwashed by the propaganda by society (and therefore is too stupid to date), or is trying to get your money and should be dumped on the spot. If they refuse a pre-nup dump them. INSTANTLY. They're not worth the trouble."

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-19, 11:17 AM
1. Kids are quite frankly worthless to anyone who doesn't care about extending their family line.

Majority of humans ever do care of that. Hint: there wouldn't be seven billion of us if they weren't. The natural drive to reproduce is pretty damn strong in all organisms, because in nature, only those types of organisms that effectively reproduce continue to exist.

I can believe you don't want a child now, but it is suspect to change, especially if you are young.

Now, the legal hurdless of modern marriage in whatever country you live in are a much more specific issue. There are myriad marriage systems, and not all of them are as unfair towards men.

But I think we've drifted off-topic enough. How about we move this joyful discussion to one of the sexism threads instead? :smallwink:

tasw
2013-10-19, 11:38 AM
Romanticism and the like (and the line what is considered romantic or sexual is incredible blurry and nigh impossible to define on a non-individual level) are one of the standard forms of entertainment in pretty much any genre for a reason. Excluding it from a game (and I am not talking about mental porn here, just harmless flirting or other form of romance) is the willfully ignorance of a very useful tool to motivate, stipulate and establish a moot and a relationship between characters and seems incredibly prudish (and rather dull) to me.

some of us dont enjoy RP'ing the maiden fair with a bunch of male friends. Its wierd and uncomfortable. They want to start some sort of relationship with an NPC thats what diplomacy/ bluff checks are for.

You want the princess? Do something to impress the king. He's the one who decides who the princess marries anyway, not her.

But for gods sake I do not want to sit and flirt with my buddy over beers. Thats just icky.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-19, 12:40 PM
What, gay chicken isn't a thing over there? Or are you just bad at playing it? Cluck cluck. :smallamused:

TheIronGolem
2013-10-19, 01:18 PM
One of mentors (who was a girl I might point out), said. "Marriage is the stupidest thing a higher income person can do. Once someone has something to gain from the failure of a relationship (money for instance), they will subconsciously work against it. Any lower income person who demands marriage is either doesn't understand economics and is brainwashed by the propaganda by society (and therefore is too stupid to date), or is trying to get your money and should be dumped on the spot. If they refuse a pre-nup dump them. INSTANTLY. They're not worth the trouble."

She didn't realize it, but what your friend was really saying was: "I have a fashionably-cynical but shallow and poorly-informed understanding of marriage, and you should politely ignore anything I have to say on the subject."

Morithias
2013-10-19, 02:46 PM
She didn't realize it, but what your friend was really saying was: "I have a fashionably-cynical but shallow and poorly-informed understanding of marriage, and you should politely ignore anything I have to say on the subject."

Okay, answer me this then.

What is the benefit of marriage?

Assuming a couple has a perfectly happy relationship. What is the BENEFIT of marriage?

A few new tax rules open up? Marrying for the money.

Religious reasons? Mentor was an atheist who saw religious organizations as hateful places that caused more harm than good.

To "prove" that they're committed? "Yes I love you so much that I'm not going to give you the freedom to leave, in fact I need the government to come in and say I get your stuff if you leave. I'm totally not into you because I'm looking for a monthly cheque."

Black Jester
2013-10-19, 03:19 PM
What is the benefit of marriage?

Public declaration of affiliation, commitment and mutual loyalty, public acceptance of affiliation and mutual loyalty. Even if you just reduce marriage to just a personal ritual, the important thing is what it matters to the people who make this commitment. Financial issues, religious issues - they only matter as much as it matters for the couple in question. But the commitment to each other, that is pretty much general.

TheIronGolem
2013-10-19, 03:29 PM
Okay, answer me this then.

What is the benefit of marriage?

Assuming a couple has a perfectly happy relationship. What is the BENEFIT of marriage?

A few new tax rules open up? Marrying for the money.

Religious reasons? Mentor was an atheist who saw religious organizations as hateful places that caused more harm than good.

To "prove" that they're committed? "Yes I love you so much that I'm not going to give you the freedom to leave, in fact I need the government to come in and say I get your stuff if you leave. I'm totally not into you because I'm looking for a monthly cheque."

It's way beyond the scope of this thread, so I'm not going to sidetrack into the details. But suffice it to say that it the matter is far more subtle and nuanced than your superficial analysis would suggest. Even Black Jester's response to that, while correct, barely scratches the surface (and I suspect he would readily admit that).

tasw
2013-10-19, 03:30 PM
What, gay chicken isn't a thing over there? Or are you just bad at playing it? Cluck cluck. :smallamused:

LOL it is. I just lose every time. Bothers the competitive side of me.

Mr Beer
2013-10-19, 03:35 PM
LOL it is. I just lose every time. Bothers the competitive side of me.

Just can't bring yourself to swallow, huh?

Broken Twin
2013-10-19, 03:56 PM
Okay, answer me this then.

What is the benefit of marriage?

Assuming a couple has a perfectly happy relationship. What is the BENEFIT of marriage?

A few new tax rules open up? Marrying for the money.

Religious reasons? Mentor was an atheist who saw religious organizations as hateful places that caused more harm than good.

To "prove" that they're committed? "Yes I love you so much that I'm not going to give you the freedom to leave, in fact I need the government to come in and say I get your stuff if you leave. I'm totally not into you because I'm looking for a monthly cheque."

How about "If you get sick I'll be able to be with you in the hospital room". Or, "If something happens to you, I'll be able to look after you without our wishes being overridden by your family"?

Marriage is a way to ensure that your relationship is respected in the eyes of the law. I've seen people who couldn't attend their spouse's funeral because their family didn't want him to be there. Or the guy who can't pay for his spouse's medical expenses because his insurance refuses to recognize their relationship.

Morithias
2013-10-19, 04:27 PM
Public declaration of affiliation, commitment and mutual loyalty, public acceptance of affiliation and mutual loyalty. Even if you just reduce marriage to just a personal ritual, the important thing is what it matters to the people who make this commitment. Financial issues, religious issues - they only matter as much as it matters for the couple in question. But the commitment to each other, that is pretty much general.

If all that matters it the commitment to each other, why do you need the legal sheet saying you are married? It is nothing more than placing a mark of justice on someone to 'prove their commitment to the cause'.


How about "If you get sick I'll be able to be with you in the hospital room". Or, "If something happens to you, I'll be able to look after you without our wishes being overridden by your family"?

Marriage is a way to ensure that your relationship is respected in the eyes of the law. I've seen people who couldn't attend their spouse's funeral because their family didn't want him to be there. Or the guy who can't pay for his spouse's medical expenses because his insurance refuses to recognize their relationship.

It's called a will.

Also I don't know about you, but in my country we have universal healthcare, so we don't need the insurance companies policies.

AMFV
2013-10-19, 05:55 PM
If all that matters it the commitment to each other, why do you need the legal sheet saying you are married? It is nothing more than placing a mark of justice on someone to 'prove their commitment to the cause'.



It's called a will.

Also I don't know about you, but in my country we have universal healthcare, so we don't need the insurance companies policies.

Well there are a lot of religious reasons to get married. And it is a proof of commitment, the best kind in fact, it's saying "even though there could be negative and demonstrable consequences if this fails, I'm willing to bet that it won't." I don't think the government should be involved in marriage. However at some point I would like to get married again.

I have been married before and it is possible that you can't understand the reasons behind it, but I can tell you that even after one marriage has soured and I've been divorced, I would still get married again if the circumstances were right. Because it is what I believe is the end of a relationship, for me that is the goal, the continuation of my line, the commitment to another person, legally bound to be so, the acknowledgement that we are together in all matters, legal and practicable, it is a serious commitment, and far more serious at least to my mind than anything before it.

NichG
2013-10-19, 06:34 PM
For the record I'm pretty much with Morithias on this one; I understand why people might want to get married, but I think there are fewer and fewer 'hard' reasons why one 'must' get married or even 'should' get married, outside of their own traditions and beliefs on the subject. I live in a state where marriage is legally not necessary to be on the same insurance, there are wills and other legal documents that can be used to cover a good portion of the legal benefits of marriage. The only reason I'd marry would be if I needed to extend/receive citizenship to continue being together.

But this is very off-thread, so I'll try to bring it back on topic with an anecdote. I'm pretty vocal about these views, and my gf and I have talked about them quite a bit. So I found it interesting to be playing a character in an Exalted campaign whose big motivation was that he wanted to marry a non-exalt for love, while arguing with the others that marriage rather than a behind-the-scenes-affair was important. It was a difficult role for me to try to play, and that difficulty was almost certainly something that could be seen in my roleplay (especially by someone who knew me).

So in that sense, yes, someone could tell something about my views by the way I played the character. But if they had looked at the character at face value (this is a character who values and idealizes marriage highly, so the player must also share that view) they would have gotten the opposite conclusion to the reality.

tasw
2013-10-19, 10:41 PM
She didn't realize it, but what your friend was really saying was: "I have a fashionably-cynical but shallow and poorly-informed understanding of marriage, and you should politely ignore anything I have to say on the subject."

Thats a very nice way of saying the friend was an idiot. But the friend was an idiot. I've been divorced and remarried. I know the cycle and that friend was a moron.

Marriage and family is a gift that doesnt have a dollar figure. its like those mastercard card commercials, X= dollars, X-dollars, marriage-priceless.

Even the first one that didnt end up being how we intended it to go was priceless and we are still amazing friends with 3 beautiful daughters we raise together.

And that is a strength, not a weakness. Its an expansion of the social group in ways that are not quantifiable. Would I like to bash my ex wifes current boyfriends head in? Yes.

I dont want her back. I left her. The sight of him still enrages me though.

We spend time with his ex all together. Our kids go to the same private school and his ex is cool.

I'm happy my ex has someone that matches the character she is playing on TV right now. And I'm happy to be re-married to someone that matches my character.

But to say that there was something wrong with the idea of marriage itself because some people dont live happily ever after is just ignorant.

tasw
2013-10-19, 10:46 PM
Okay, answer me this then.

What is the benefit of marriage?


If you dont understand it then you have never really been in love. And you wont ever understand it until you are.

Its not possible to explain in words the balm to the soul that marriage is.

Theres no way to quantify the value of having someone that you wake up with every morning, go to bed with every night and know you have both committed to doing it forever. The comfort, the ability to plan forever, the pure feeling you have when you lay down with someone in your arms knowing that they want to spend the rest of their lives sleeping in your arms. It cant be explained to people who dont have it.

You will only understand it when you DO have it. And nothing anyone ever says before that will explain it.

Morithias
2013-10-19, 10:53 PM
And that is a strength, not a weakness. Its an expansion of the social group in ways that are not quantifiable. Would I like to bash my ex wifes head in? Yes.

I dont want her back. I left her. The sight of him still enrages me though.


If you dont understand it then you have never really been in love. And you wont ever understand it until you are.

Its not possible to explain in words the balm to the soul that marriage is.

Theres no way to quantify the value of having someone that you wake up with every morning, go to bed with every night and know you have both committed to doing it forever. The comfort, the ability to plan forever, the pure feeling you have when you lay down with someone in your arms knowing that they want to spend the rest of their lives sleeping in your arms. It cant be explained to people who dont have it.

You will only understand it when you DO have it. And nothing anyone ever says before that will explain it.

You did a really good job at doing it "Forever" considering you apparently hate her enough now to want to bash her head in.

If you can't quantify something. It isn't real. Period.

Oh and as for me never being in love? I happen to be in a relationship that is going very well right now, and my girlfriend is perfectly happy to never marry, listen to logic, and formal science studies on how to optimize our relationship. For example, taking time apart so we don't get sick of each other.

We don't need to marry, because quite frankly, we don't need a sheet of paper from the government, or the 'approval' of some divine being that no one can prove is actually there to know that we love each other.

tasw
2013-10-19, 10:59 PM
You did a really good job at doing it "Forever" considering you apparently hate her enough now to want to bash her head in.

If you can't quantify something. It isn't real. Period.

Oh and as for me never being in love? I happen to be in a relationship that is going very well right now, and my girlfriend is perfectly happy to never marry, listen to logic, and formal science studies on how to optimize our relationship. For example, taking time apart so we don't get sick of each other.

We don't need to marry, because quite frankly, we don't need a sheet of paper from the government, or the 'approval' of some divine being that no one can prove is actually there to know that we love each other.

Nice creative editing.

No you cant every quantify love. Ever. its not a math problem. Its emotions and feelings and far more complicated then some economic equation. Which for the record your friend was also wrong in.

Your girlfriend is happy to never marry YOU. Update this thread in 10 years and lets see who she's married to.

Morithias
2013-10-19, 11:03 PM
Nice creative editing.

No you cant every quantify love. Ever. its not a math problem. Its emotions and feelings and far more complicated then some economic equation. Which for the record your friend was also wrong in.

Your girlfriend is happy to never marry YOU. Update this thread in 10 years and lets see who she's married to.

I'm just saying that if my country of Canada has a divorce ratio of 48, and the Usa one of 53. Then either the big guy upstairs is doing a horrible job blessing said marriages, or "marriage" isn't some super clean "forever and ever" type of thing that most idealized versions make it out to be.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_demography

AMFV
2013-10-19, 11:56 PM
You did a really good job at doing it "Forever" considering you apparently hate her enough now to want to bash her head in.

If you can't quantify something. It isn't real. Period.

Oh and as for me never being in love? I happen to be in a relationship that is going very well right now, and my girlfriend is perfectly happy to never marry, listen to logic, and formal science studies on how to optimize our relationship. For example, taking time apart so we don't get sick of each other.

We don't need to marry, because quite frankly, we don't need a sheet of paper from the government, or the 'approval' of some divine being that no one can prove is actually there to know that we love each other.


It's possible that you simply don't understand the motivations behind getting married. I'm certainly not going to question your romantic feelings for girlfriend, since that's already been done, and it'd be tacky and inappropriate of me to do so.

But even if you can't quantify it, for me the opposite is true, I could not understand the reverse perspective not even a little bit. I've had a bad relationship and a divorce, and I'd still get married again, I can't quantify that not being the end goal of a relationship.

It's even possible that you enjoy a marriage like relationship without the legal side, but for me, that's an intrinsic part of a marriage, becoming one legal entity for many things. It's saying that when I purchase a house I intend to share it, when I make expensive purchases, she should be also involved. When we have children, I want an equal stake in rearing them. When either of us have rough patches we can expect the other to be there. This is partially what marriage is about. If you want to include the religious angle there is so much more.

But I can see that you refuse to acknowledge that there could be another perspective on this issue that could be a valid one, that's the problem with people that think that you can quantify everything, once you've made a decision you tend to ignore the parts of your thinking that are a little subjective and then you become convinced that your answer is the only answer. Just because there is a high divorce rate, does not invalidate marriage. Certainly nobody is forcing you to get married, or requiring that you conform to that standard, but you have no right, and even more importantly no perspective to judge other people based on that preference.

tasw
2013-10-20, 12:16 AM
I'm just saying that if my country of Canada has a divorce ratio of 48, and the Usa one of 53. Then either the big guy upstairs is doing a horrible job blessing said marriages, or "marriage" isn't some super clean "forever and ever" type of thing that most idealized versions make it out to be.
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Or maybe thats a pig ignorant, overly cynical view of human relations.

And many people get married young. Your young and in love. You get married. Its what you do.

And then you change over the years. We all do. Maybe you change in ways that make you as close or closer and maybe you change in ways that push you apart. it happens.

Nothing about that invalidates the idea of committing to forever.

I'll get uncomfortably personal here and say that I'm glad my ex wife filed for divorce. I never would have. When I said forever, till death, I meant it. And even though I was deeply unhappy i would never have filed. We are very good friends now and thats whats best for us.

We have some extra curriculars that are not best for her current guy but thats not my problem. Its his.

My current wife has no idea. I love her. But if for one minute I thought me and the first wife could have a happy 9-5 life we would be remarried in a heartbeat. I said forever with her and I meant it. For better or worst, richer or poorer, she is my heart. Barring her coming back no one could ever interest me but my current wife.

I am committed to her. The first wife has priority on my heart though.

marriage isnt about money, or societies perceptions. Its about a clear statement to each other and the world that you dont want anyone else. That you 2 are committed to going the distance together and growing old together.

Morithias
2013-10-20, 12:19 AM
marriage isnt about money, or societies perceptions. Its about a clear statement to each other and the world that you dont want anyone else. That you 2 are committed to going the distance together and growing old together.

If it's just about making a statement and is symbolic, it doesn't need to be marriage. It can be anything else. If it's about the statement, a green lantern ring works just as well as a diamond ring, and a big party works just as well as a wedding.

TaiLiu
2013-10-20, 12:23 AM
If it's just about making a statement and is symbolic, it doesn't need to be marriage. It can be anything else. If it's about the statement, a green lantern ring works just as well as a diamond ring, and a big party works just as well as a wedding.
Perhaps, but the culture and social influences from society are likely to cause an individual to desire the diamond and the wedding. Sort of like how one wants a new computer, or a new piece of technology - one has no innate desire for them, but one desires them anyway because of outside pressures.

Morithias
2013-10-20, 12:26 AM
Perhaps, but the culture and social influences from society are likely to cause an individual to desire the diamond and the wedding. Sort of like how one wants a new computer, or a new piece of technology - one has no innate desire for them, but one desires them anyway because of outside pressures.

At least a new computer has practical uses. I will never understand jewelry. Paying $3000 for a rock, because it's shiny makes you look like an easily entertained caveman.

I'm not joking I actually asked my mother the appeal of jewelry once and she said 'because it sparkles', and she isn't some kind of idiot either. She's a trained accountant, who knows financials!

It also doesn't help that that diamond probably has a horrid history and the money for it is probably going to African warlords.

tasw
2013-10-20, 12:30 AM
If it's just about making a statement and is symbolic, it doesn't need to be marriage. It can be anything else. If it's about the statement, a green lantern ring works just as well as a diamond ring, and a big party works just as well as a wedding.

We got married alone in the county court house.

The statement is to each other. Its about saying to your partner "i will be with you, forever, no matter what you need or what happens, I will be here with you".

Legally I'm a libertarian and I dont believe marriage should be a legal state. Its a spiritual one the government has no business in.

But the concept of making a spiritual commitment to one person forever is one that gives so much more to the married people then they give up that its impossible to explain to people who have never felt it.

Morithias
2013-10-20, 12:35 AM
We got married alone in the county court house.

The statement is to each other. Its about saying to your partner "i will be with you, forever, no matter what you need or what happens, I will be here with you".

Legally I'm a libertarian and I dont believe marriage should be a legal state. Its a spiritual one the government has no business in.

But the concept of making a spiritual commitment to one person forever is one that gives so much more to the married people then they give up that its impossible to explain to people who have never felt it.

So make the spiritual commitment and skip the legal stuff. Nothing is given up, nothing is at risk, and you gain the spiritual commitment.

Bam, perfectly optimized.

Of course if you just do that it stops being marriage.

"marriage
ˈmarɪdʒ/Submit
noun
1.
the formal union of a man and a woman, typically as recognized by law, by which they become husband and wife."

and just becomes vows of commitment. An informal union I guess.

TaiLiu
2013-10-20, 12:46 AM
At least a new computer has practical uses. I will never understand jewelry. Paying $3000 for a rock, because it's shiny makes you look like an easily entertained caveman.

I'm not joking I actually asked my mother the appeal of jewelry once and she said 'because it sparkles', and she isn't some kind of idiot either. She's a trained accountant, who knows financials!

It also doesn't help that that diamond probably has a horrid history and the money for it is probably going to African warlords.
Well, I suppose, but shiny jewellery probably had a practically use in older times, too - whether for its magical properties, luck-bringing powers, or status assurances. We know it to be untrue nowadays, certainly, but strangely enough, we stick to it. My book on jade speaks of its luckiness, for instance.

Besides, humans do plenty of impractical things, for cultural or social reasons. I am wearing a jade necklace around my neck right now, and it is of little use.

So make the spiritual commitment and skip the legal stuff. Nothing is given up, nothing is at risk, and you gain the spiritual commitment.

Bam, perfectly optimized.
Well, the legal benefits are quite nice.

Of course if you just do that it stops being marriage.

"marriage
ˈmarɪdʒ/Submit
noun
1.
the formal union of a man and a woman, typically as recognized by law, by which they become husband and wife."
See, I prefer "an intimate or close union" as the definition. No need to limit it to only two genders.

tasw
2013-10-20, 01:20 AM
So make the spiritual commitment and skip the legal stuff. Nothing is given up, nothing is at risk, and you gain the spiritual commitment.

Bam, perfectly optimized.

Of course if you just do that it stops being marriage.

"marriage
ˈmarɪdʒ/Submit
noun
1.
the formal union of a man and a woman, typically as recognized by law, by which they become husband and wife."

and just becomes vows of commitment. An informal union I guess.

No your understanding of marriage is deeply flawed.

The government has nothing to do with it.

Marriage is a man and a woman who have committed to be together, build a family and be a TEAM forever. 2 people who love each other and commit to being together forever.

My wife is my wife because we wake up together and plan our day, we care for the children together and at night we go to bed together.

And we do this with the determination that we will do this forever. The commitment that even if we fight (people do) and even when we disagree (people do) at the end of the day we are committed to being together for the good and the bad.

The idea is that this not my girlfriend who I enjoy hanging out with, this is not my friend with a benefit that I enjoy sex with, this is not my friend who I like to talk with.

This is my wife. This is the woman who I share everything with, this is the woman who I will be with when I am 90. This is the woman who will ignore or like my crazy crap just like I ignore hers because when we lay down on the couch, snuggle up and watch a TV show it feels RIGHT. It feels like this is the woman I want in my arms and she thinks this is the man whose arms I want around me.

And there is no quantifying that with numbers.

Morithias
2013-10-20, 01:22 AM
Marriage is a man and a woman who have committed to be together, build a family and be a TEAM forever. 2 people who love each other and commit to being together forever.

And how is that any different from me and my girlfriend? We love each other, we're committed to each other. The only thing we don't plan to do is build a family, but that's mostly because I have a few genetic problems that I wouldn't want to pass onto a kid.

tasw
2013-10-20, 01:52 AM
And how is that any different from me and my girlfriend? We love each other, we're committed to each other. The only thing we don't plan to do is build a family, but that's mostly because I have a few genetic problems that I wouldn't want to pass onto a kid.

because you haven't committed. Commitment has penalties for leaving, because you are committed.

You havent made commitments to forever because if you happen to crap out you have no penalties.

Real marriage has more meaning then dating precisely because you both know that there are penalties for leaving it. And you knew that before entering it. So you made a conscious choice, despite legal downsides to commit to one person forever.

This difference is so important that gay groups wont except legal connections that dont have the name marriage.

Its not the benefits, its not the penalties. Its the IDEA of marriage that they want.

Which is one thing that can pull us together. Because all mature adults want that idea.

Broken Twin
2013-10-20, 01:56 AM
At least a new computer has practical uses. I will never understand jewelry. Paying $3000 for a rock, because it's shiny makes you look like an easily entertained caveman.

I'm not joking I actually asked my mother the appeal of jewelry once and she said 'because it sparkles', and she isn't some kind of idiot either. She's a trained accountant, who knows financials!

It also doesn't help that that diamond probably has a horrid history and the money for it is probably going to African warlords.

While I disagree with your opinion on marriage, I do agree with that. If I ever get married, we're not going bankrupt to celebrate. My brother and his wife paid around $200 for both their rings, and they're just as functional as any other wedding ring. Corporations have done an amazing job of convincing the public that buying expensive **** for your S.O. is the only way to truly show you care about them. :smallsigh:

[I'm Canadian as well, by the way. The insurance remark was due to news articles I've read about stuff that has happened down in the states, among other things. When you discuss a global institution, you need to consider places other then your own.]

Morithias
2013-10-20, 02:06 AM
because you haven't committed. Commitment has penalties for leaving, because you are committed.

Got it.

No one except the Paladin or Healer is dedicated to Good. That rogue who's neutral good? Not committed to good at all.

That LN fighter who is dedicated to her lord? Not committed because she's not a monk.

That CG wizard who is dedicated to freedom, and fights against tyranny everywhere? Not committed to chaos, because she's not a warlock.

Broken Twin
2013-10-20, 02:19 AM
Got it.

No one except the Paladin or Healer is dedicated to Good. That rogue who's neutral good? Not committed to good at all.

That LN fighter who is dedicated to her lord? Not committed because she's not a monk.

That CG wizard who is dedicated to freedom, and fights against tyranny everywhere? Not committed to chaos, because she's not a warlock.

I... I'm not sure how what you're saying has anything to do with what they posted. :smallconfused:

I mean, I get you're making a reductio ad absurdum argument, I just don't understand why you think so does your side of the discussion any favors.

Morithias
2013-10-20, 02:20 AM
I... I'm not sure how what you're saying has anything to do with what they posted. :smallconfused:

I mean, I get you're making a reductio ad absurdum argument, I just don't understand why you think so does your side of the discussion any favors.

I'm arguing you can be committed or loyal to something without penalties for leaving. In fact you staying even when there is no downside is proof that you're even MORE committed. You don't need the threat of punishment to keep in line.

tasw
2013-10-20, 02:27 AM
Got it.

No one except the Paladin or Healer is dedicated to Good. That rogue who's neutral good? Not committed to good at all.

That LN fighter who is dedicated to her lord? Not committed because she's not a monk.

That CG wizard who is dedicated to freedom, and fights against tyranny everywhere? Not committed to chaos, because she's not a warlock.

Yes you do understand perfectly. Any of those characters could walk way from their plan tomorrow and suffer nothing.

Because they are not COMMITTED to it. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.

Morithias
2013-10-20, 02:30 AM
Yes you do understand perfectly. Any of those characters could walk way from their plan tomorrow and suffer nothing.

Because they are not COMMITTED to it. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.

Very well. Then I know the ultimate way to get my girlfriend "COMMITTED" to me.

An explosive collar.

She leaves, I take her head.

Please note that I'm mocking you and not actually serious.

Broken Twin
2013-10-20, 02:43 AM
I'm arguing you can be committed or loyal to something without penalties for leaving. In fact you staying even when there is no downside is proof that you're even MORE committed. You don't need the threat of punishment to keep in line.

Ah, I understand you now.

Personally, I don't think the idea of marriage is quite "Hey, we love each other so much, let's make it so there's penalties for leaving each other!" I'd say it has a lot more to do with the idea that, as a married couple, you're part of a unit, something bigger then just yourself. That sense of belonging has a powerful effect on people. It's about saying that the relationship isn't about the two people as separate individuals, but a singular unit of people who have sworn to always be there for each other. Marriage is a promise that you'll be there to look out for each other until the very end.

Morithias
2013-10-20, 02:46 AM
Ah, I understand you now.

Personally, I don't think the idea of marriage is quite "Hey, we love each other so much, let's make it so there's penalties for leaving each other!" I'd say it has a lot more to do with the idea that, as a married couple, you're part of a unit, something bigger then just yourself. That sense of belonging has a powerful effect on people. It's about saying that the relationship isn't about the two people as separate individuals, but a singular unit of people who have sworn to always be there for each other. Marriage is a promise that you'll be there to look out for each other until the very end.

And I'm saying you can make that promise without anything legal, religious, or the like. So long as the promise is just as true to your heart.

tasw
2013-10-20, 02:57 AM
Very well. Then I know the ultimate way to get my girlfriend "COMMITTED" to me.

An explosive collar.

She leaves, I take her head.

Please note that I'm mocking you and not actually serious.

No your ignorant and immature with no understanding of real commitment.

Thats okay though. No one does understand it until they have it.

Like most kids you think you know it all and us old farts just dont get it. LOL every generation thinks the same. Then they grow up, their brains mature and they stop acting like fools.

You'll get there.

NichG
2013-10-20, 02:59 AM
Because all mature adults want that idea.

This is a 'no true Scotsman'. Clearly you get something from 'that idea', but just because you do does not mean that agreeing with you is a prerequisite for being a 'mature adult'.

In fact, I would say that it is more mature to have a realistic view of the future and to understand that things that feel good physically OR spiritually in the present may not be healthy in the long run. If you recognize that people change and may drift apart, creating things that will make that eventual separation more damaging for both parties is a very immature thing to do - you're putting a spiritual 'high' above the well-being of your partner and yourself.

Children obviously modify this situation. In that case, the penalties on the parents for separating are there to give the child some protection against the parents making decisions that hurt the child for the sake of their own happiness.

Sith_Happens
2013-10-20, 03:00 AM
So, what if anything would any you read into someone subscribing to the Stormwind Fallacy? Seriously people, take it to the PMs.

tasw
2013-10-20, 03:00 AM
And I'm saying you can make that promise without anything legal, religious, or the like. So long as the promise is just as true to your heart.

Hearts change.

Adults realize there are times when you fight, when you argue, there are things you just flat out wont agree on no matter what.

But you stay together because you are committed.

And non-married relationships just dont. The facts and studies bear it out.

When you can take a walk and crap out with no penalties its too easy to do so when things get hard. Whereas a committed married couple will work through that stuff.

tasw
2013-10-20, 03:03 AM
This is a 'no true Scotsman'. Clearly you get something from 'that idea', but just because you do does not mean that agreeing with you is a prerequisite for being a 'mature adult'.

In fact, I would say that it is more mature to have a realistic view of the future

My view is the realistic one. Thats why its worked for 5,000 years of human civilization and the opposite one has caused chaos, turmoil, economic damage and long term risk for the 40 years it has existed.

NichG
2013-10-20, 03:06 AM
So, what if anything would any you read into someone subscribing to the Stormwind Fallacy? Seriously people, take it to the PMs.

That probably says more about people they've played with in the past than their own personality. If they've played with a lot of people who powergame in a harmful manner (e.g. spotlight stealing or other disruptive play) or who munchkin a lot, then they may well feel that someone who is able to build a strong character will belong to those groups.

And the thing is, that may well be true in their particular social group, even if its not generalizable to a wider population.

Morithias
2013-10-20, 03:08 AM
My view is the realistic one. Thats why its worked for 5,000 years of human civilization and the opposite one has caused chaos, turmoil, economic damage and long term risk for the 40 years it has existed.

And slavery worked for around 5000 years, until the Civil War broke out and caused chaos, turmoil, economic damage, and death for it's duration.

To put it bluntly. You're coming across, as...outdated.

The equivalent of a racist grandparent, who uses the argument "I'm a senior." or "that's how we did it in my day". To back their arguments without any actual evidence.

Edit: Yeah we've got the other thread, and this is getting nowhere. I'm bowing out.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-20, 06:39 AM
Morithias & Tasw:

Please, leave talking of history to people who know something about it. Your conversation is starting to sound bad even as a joke. :smalltongue:

Karkos
2013-10-21, 11:20 AM
*slightly insane rant

Wow.........just wow. Even after I apologized to you?

I'm at a loss for words.

So you give an example of a campaign with your specific players that involves a lot of sexual ambiguity and explores some deeper issues, etc. That's fine. But it's definitely not for everybody.

I prefer my D&D to be rated R for violence and the sex left to the imagination. You sound like you're chastising me for not playing a NC-17 campaign.

The thought of flirting and sexual RP'ing with my usually male buddies is uncomfortable to me. It's obviously not uncomfortable for you and there's nothing wrong with that.

Different strokes for different folks. :smallwink:

Scow2
2013-10-21, 11:46 AM
If it's just about making a statement and is symbolic, it doesn't need to be marriage. It can be anything else. If it's about the statement, a green lantern ring works just as well as a diamond ring, and a big party works just as well as a wedding.As much as tasw is falling into the "One True Interpretation" you are (From the opposite side, though).

Your relationship seems to be more grounded in logic and numbers (From what you say)... but the "If it's not quantifiable, it doesn't exist" is offensively untrue for the majority of people.

The wedding really is just one big party and formal announcement of togetherness. And the ring is a physical reminder of the commitment: "Diamonds are forever" (Well, technically, only a few thousand years... but that's forever compared to a human life). It's also a BIG monetary investment, and the 'lack of practicality' is part of the point: The value is symbolic. If you use a new computer or other expensive tool to represent an undying relationship, you still have a computer if the relationship goes south. If you have a wedding ring, that suddenly becomes worthless when the relationship ends.

It's a tool for stability, at the cost of transient happiness.

Lorsa
2013-10-21, 02:25 PM
Hearts change.

Adults realize there are times when you fight, when you argue, there are things you just flat out wont agree on no matter what.

But you stay together because you are committed.

And non-married relationships just dont. The facts and studies bear it out.

When you can take a walk and crap out with no penalties its too easy to do so when things get hard. Whereas a committed married couple will work through that stuff.

Commitment (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/commitment)

There is nothing that states that the only way to be in a commited relationship is to get married, unless you define marriage as being bound emotionally to a person and promise to do something for him/her in the future. But that's just commitment so it would in effect be two words to describe the same thing, effectively it would make commited relationship = a married relationship.

Unfortunately, most countries to not legally count all commited relationships as marriage (although in Sweden, much of the same judical rights as are being extended to married couplies are also being extended to couples who have lived together for a long time). So when you say "marriage", most people will use the definition applied by the law of their nation, something I find rather natural. In modern society (and historically too), marriage is simply a legal construct.

Also, statistically speaking, children growing up with commited non-married parents in Sweden are less likely to be split up by the relationship breaking up compared to children growing up with married parents in the United States. So claiming that non-married relationships don't stick together is simply false.

EDIT:


If you have a wedding ring, that suddenly becomes worthless when the relationship ends.

A ring typically made of gold and diamond is suddenly worthless? I suppose that depends what you mean by worth, but it certainly holds monetary value.