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WalkingTheShade
2015-08-17, 05:17 AM
I tried to think of a less tacky title, but this one goes to the point.

I guess every DM has his limits of what he's OK to see in game, and mine is twofold.

I've always refused to describe any scene involving sex (between PCs, NPCs and PCs, etc.), either consensual or not, either dramatic or comedic... My reaction when such a situation occurs is "curtain down, some things happen off-screen, curtain comes back up with the morning sun". I give the lightest description I can, and that does frustrate some players who'd like to insert at least some limited role-play elements, without necessarily describing every detail.

The biggest problem I have is with rape.
Now, I never had a problem when other people DM and use it as an element (as long as they are mature about it, or the context is unambiguously absurd).
Neither do I have a problem with graphic torture scenes, that could IC have at least as much consequences on a character, and could be reacted to as badly OOC by players.
Last, I don't have an issue with rape used for backstory.
However, I go out of my way to avoid it's presence in game.

During my 15+ years career as a DM, I often went out of my way to avoid these situations, as they take me out of my comfort zone.
It has been problematic in the past, but not overly so, but now I feel it entails some limits. Regarding consensual sex, how a character behaves (rough or gentle, timid or confident, caring or self-absorbed, deeply loving or manipulative) is part of that character's development and personality.
Concerning rape, I feel avoiding the subject can harm the verisimilitude in some situations: soldiers sacking a city, characters being captured by enemies, etc.

Now I'm not looking for excuses for turning every game into a storm of depravity or inflicting horrible torment on PCs. It's just that I have difficulties addressing these issues, even when they're not going to happen.

Anyone has gaming experiences he'd like to share? or advice?

oshi
2015-08-17, 05:30 AM
I've GM'd some Black Crusade, and I think I just had one rule for the players: No sexual violence. I brought up the same rule on the spot when they captured a female NPC in my Iron Kingdoms game.
I personally don't want to hear about it, deal with it, or think about it, so I just don't go there... Some things aren't worth the verisimilitude :). I know that's not helpful advice, I just wanted to make sure you knew there's definitely other people out there that are happy to exclude it from a roleplaying game.

JAL_1138
2015-08-17, 06:02 AM
...not only are you not alone, in my experience you're in the vast majority.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-17, 06:15 AM
I've GM'd some Black Crusade, and I think I just had one rule for the players: No sexual violence. I brought up the same rule on the spot when they captured a female NPC in my Iron Kingdoms game.
I personally don't want to hear about it, deal with it, or think about it, so I just don't go there... Some things aren't worth the verisimilitude :). I know that's not helpful advice, I just wanted to make sure you knew there's definitely other people out there that are happy to exclude it from a roleplaying game.
This is helpful. How did players take to that rule? I know there's more to playing a servant of Slaanesh than jumping on everything that moves, but as a player, I could find this restrictive. Again, as a player, within limits, with mature players who know each other well, I never had an issue with sexual violence in game. Moreover, in a game like Black Crusade, I can imagine a lot of horrible horrible things happening. The ban on some kind of violence could look arbitrary to some. (I'm not judging, I'd do the same thing if I was DMing your game.)


...not only are you not alone, in my experience you're in the vast majority.
Well, in my experience, it's been more of a 50/50 thing. So, yeah, we're sharing experiences.

Anonymouswizard
2015-08-17, 06:28 AM
I tend towards not allowing it to be brought up, and any sort of sexual violation moves you towards Chaotic Evil slightly faster than murdering a retirement village if I do allow it (assuming an equal rate of transgression). I also very strongly hint at stopping it before bringing out the bangammer to keep the conversation from getting aggressive (and actually only outright ban it done on PCs, I will just bring in dire consequences for doing it on NPCs, I need to finish the random STI table I'm working on).

If the PC wants to do stuff with a consenting partner they can either have it fade to black or give a one phrase description. It's never come up in game, but I seem to end up in groups that rolls a party of nerds, so it's not surprising. This is mainly why I'm writing a random STI table (because nobody I've played with is depraved enough to roleplay sexual assault).

Lalliman
2015-08-17, 06:36 AM
I hope i don't come off as a sociopath, but i sincerely don't understand why rape is where people draw the line. It's a terrible act, which means it's only appropriate if you're playing in a terrible setting. As a fan of dark fantasy, rape is what i turn to when i want to make absolutely clear how evil a character is.

Banning it in a setting that's not supposed to have a dark tone makes sense, but otherwise it seems like a knee-jerk reaction. Like how people flipped out when a certain character got raped on GoT, but they didn't when another character's penis got cut off, which is undeniably an even viler act.

I'd never feature on-screen rape in a game if i'm not absolutely sure the other players are fine with it, but that's only for their sake. Me, i feel like, if i'm getting dark, i might as well commit to it.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-17, 06:50 AM
I tend towards not allowing it to be brought up, and any sort of sexual violation moves you towards Chaotic Evil slightly faster than murdering a retirement village if I do allow it (assuming an equal rate of transgression). I also very strongly hint at stopping it before bringing out the bangammer to keep the conversation from getting aggressive (and actually only outright ban it done on PCs, I will just bring in dire consequences for doing it on NPCs, I need to finish the random STI table I'm working on).
I've never brought up STI in my games... that's not a tool I'd use to make players more responsible. Also, in a setting where magic is able to cure mostly anything, it might not really be a deterrent.


I hope i don't come off as a sociopath, but i sincerely don't understand why rape is where people draw the line. It's a terrible act, which means it's only appropriate if you're playing in a terrible setting. As a fan of dark fantasy, rape is what i turn to when i want to make absolutely clear how evil a character is.
Banning it in a setting that's not supposed to have a dark tone makes sense, but otherwise it seems like a knee-jerk reaction.
I mostly agree with you on this level. Let's however note that some would argue there are more subtle ways to mark some character as Evil instead of rape. Let's also note that your last sentence seems to imply rape is morally more wrong than other acts.


Like how people flipped out when a certain character got raped on GoT, but they didn't when another character's penis got cut off, which is undeniably an even viler act.
What you are doing now is using a moral scale to compare two different acts. Before anyone takes that as a flame bait, I'd just want to take a moment to tell you that, to some people, rape is a worse kind of evil than torture or dismemberment.
On my side, even if I refuse to compare one to the other, I realise that I have a lot of unease playing one but not the other in a pen & paper RPG where I am DM.


I'd never feature on-screen rape in a game if i'm not absolutely sure the other players are fine with it, but that's only for their sake. Me, i feel like, if i'm getting dark, i might as well commit to it.
Yup, I agree again. The question now is how you make sure of that?

Anonymouswizard
2015-08-17, 07:01 AM
I hope i don't come off as a sociopath, but i sincerely don't understand why rape is where people draw the line. It's a terrible act, which means it's only appropriate if you're playing in a terrible setting. As a fan of dark fantasy, rape is what i turn to when i want to make absolutely clear how evil a character is.

Banning it in a setting that's not supposed to have a dark tone makes sense, but otherwise it seems like a knee-jerk reaction. Like how people flipped out when a certain character got raped on GoT, but they didn't when another character's penis got cut off, which is undeniably an even viler act.

I'd never feature on-screen rape in a game if i'm not absolutely sure the other players are fine with it, but that's only for their sake. Me, i feel like, if i'm getting dark, i might as well commit to it.

I'm fine with off screen rape, but if a PC tries to commit it in game, no matter how dark the world, they have to be careful or get the same level of walloping that being a serial killer would get their characters, which is to say they likely have police chasing them.


I've never brought up STI in my games... that's not a tool I'd use to make players more responsible. Also, in a setting where magic is able to cure mostly anything, it might not really be a deterrent.

I tend to either run relatively low magic, or I make messing with biology difficult, but I can see why it isn't a problem in D&D.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-17, 07:05 AM
I'm fine with off screen rape, but if a PC tries to commit it in game, no matter how dark the world, they have to be careful or get the same level of walloping that being a serial killer would get their characters, which is to say they likely have police chasing them.
Yeap, but we're again discussing in-game deterents. My main issue is actually OOC, in the way I run my games.


I tend to either run relatively low magic, or I make messing with biology difficult, but I can see why it isn't a problem in D&D.
D&D, or any other game with sufficiently advanced magic or technology, which covers a lot, if not most, of published settings I can think of.

Lalliman
2015-08-17, 07:41 AM
Let's also note that your last sentence seems to imply rape is morally more wrong than other acts.

What you are doing now is using a moral scale to compare two different acts. Before anyone takes that as a flame bait, I'd just want to take a moment to tell you that, to some people, rape is a worse kind of evil than torture or dismemberment.
I don't wanna make a statement about rape vs torture, because i've never experienced either, so it's hard to say. But since the majority of people seem to view rape as a greater evil to almost anything else, that's what i play into.

That being said, i feel like this specific example has to trump the average rape case. Not only are you permanently maiming the person, the psychological effects must be... inconceivable. I don't think, and 'think' is keyword here, that a single case of rape could do psychological damage of nearly the same intensity. Repeated sexual assault, that could be a different matter.
Then again, this is an extreme, so might not be particularly relevant.

Lapsed Pacifist
2015-08-17, 07:51 AM
Remember: any element in a game is only a problem if you or your players have a problem with it. The corollary to this is that you don't know the history of your players, and they shouldn't have to tell you about everything that would be a dealbreaker for them. So the answer is, if you want to introduce these elements, do so with good faith. Ask your players whether they would have a problem with particular content, and if they would, don't bring it up. (I would do this by anonymous ballot to avoid potential awkwardness). I can't think of single instance where springing a rape scene on players without prior warning would be a good idea, so don't do that. The same applies if players bring this stuff up; the safety and comfort of the group is more important than the individual player's authorial control.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-17, 07:58 AM
I don't wanna make a statement about rape vs torture, because i've never experienced either, so it's hard to say. But since the majority of people seem to view rape as a greater evil to almost anything else, that's what i play into.
I understand this. Now, my first reaction would be to attempt to subvert expectations (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SubvertedTrope), but thinking more about it, I can't imagine a way of doing it that wouldn't give a wrong message.


That being said, i feel like this specific example has to trump the average rape case. Not only are you permanently maiming the person, the psychological effects must be... inconceivable. I don't think, and 'think' is keyword here, that a single case of rape could do psychological damage of nearly the same intensity. Repeated sexual assault, that could be a different matter.
Then again, this is an extreme, so might not be particularly relevant.
Somehow, I was also thinking of A Song of Ice and Fire while writing the first post. I don't like much how the TV show treats rape and torture as that treatment, to me, stinks of voyeurism and exploitation for shock value and ratings.
(Psychological issues are much more prevalent and explored in the books, but then, it might be a medium Book-vs-TV issue. I can't think of a movie or TV show employing on screen rape as a dramatic tool in a smart way.)

The books are however the first source of fiction that made me question my "ban" on rape (as a dramatic tool, again) during my games.

Nifft
2015-08-17, 08:03 AM
I hope i don't come off as a sociopath, but i sincerely don't understand why rape is where people draw the line. It's a terrible act, which means it's only appropriate if you're playing in a terrible setting. As a fan of dark fantasy, rape is what i turn to when i want to make absolutely clear how evil a character is.

Can't speak for anyone else, but rape is something I'd never allow in a game, specifically because I don't want my game to cater to the sexual fantasies of any hypothetical creepy player who might want to indulge in that sort of thing. Nor do I want to make anyone uncomfortable about sex in general, or about rape in specific.

This is, of course, not specific to rape -- all sorts of sexy things happen off-screen and don't get narration, because I don't really want to cater to anyone's sexual fantasy, even the non-rape-fantasy people, and again I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable, which sex has a disproportionate and unpredictable ability to do, and which rape has an even more disproportionately huge ability to do.

- - -

Thinking about it, the only way rape would make it into my game would be:
- A player who wanted to play a former rapist who wanted to atone -- all consequences, none of the (yuck) "fun" (yuck).
- A player who wanted to play a rape victim, either seeking revenge or seeking to overcome the trauma.

Neither of those has ever come up, and I don't really expect them to, but it's nice to know where my line is.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-17, 08:23 AM
Remember: any element in a game is only a problem if you or your players have a problem with it. The corollary to this is that you don't know the history of your players, and they shouldn't have to tell you about everything that would be a dealbreaker for them. So the answer is, if you want to introduce these elements, do so with good faith. Ask your players whether they would have a problem with particular content, and if they would, don't bring it up. (I would do this by anonymous ballot to avoid potential awkwardness). I can't think of single instance where springing a rape scene on players without prior warning would be a good idea, so don't do that. The same applies if players bring this stuff up; the safety and comfort of the group is more important than the individual player's authorial control.
Thank you. I had put that into the equation. But it's good to precise clearly for the sake of the thread.
In my specific situation, I usually play with players I've known for years, if not decades. I know them well enough outside the game that I think rape in itself wouldn't be a problem. (I might be wrong, but if a problem does arise, I'm confident it could be handled simply.)


Can't speak for anyone else, but rape is something I'd never allow in a game, specifically because I don't want my game to cater to the sexual fantasies of any hypothetical creepy player who might want to indulge in that sort of thing. Nor do I want to make anyone uncomfortable about sex in general, or about rape in specific.

This is, of course, not specific to rape -- all sorts of sexy things happen off-screen and don't get narration, because I don't really want to cater to anyone's sexual fantasy, even the non-rape-fantasy people, and again I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable, which sex has a disproportionate and unpredictable ability to do, and which rape has an even more disproportionately huge ability to do.
Yes, I think my issues are on the same level, actually.


Thinking about it, the only way rape would make it into my game would be:
- A player who wanted to play a former rapist who wanted to atone -- all consequences, none of the (yuck) "fun" (yuck).
- A player who wanted to play a rape victim, either seeking revenge or seeking to overcome the trauma.

Neither of those has ever come up, and I don't really expect them to, but it's nice to know where my line is.
As I said, I'm OK with rape as backstory (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RapeAsBackstory) (for NPCs until now, since no PC using this elements, yet).

Talyn
2015-08-17, 08:24 AM
I absolutely would not allow a PC in any of my games to commit a rape. Any player that suggested such an act would be told "no," and if they suggested it a second time would be asked to leave my table and not come back. (And yes, this did happen, and the rape-advocate is no longer gaming with us.)

I'm not interested in arguments about the historical validity of prisoner rape, or the ultimate refuge of jackass players, "well, that's what my character would do." The fact of the matter is that we are sitting around a table indulging in a power fantasy - and I will not facilitate my players engaging in rape as part of their power fantasy.

Rape-as-backstory and even rape-as-setting-element can be okay (in small doses), but I would caution against fellow DMs making it a major part of your game, even as a backstory and NPC-only element. Unfortunately, in many situations, tabletop RPGs are still a boys' club, and female players have been made to feel unwelcome and uncomfortable around many tables. A bunch of teenage boys (or young adult men) sitting in a group and blithely talking or joking about rape is not a group that is going to welcome female peers.

tgva8889
2015-08-17, 08:27 AM
One important element of rape to understand is that most survivors of rape don't want to talk about it. It's extremely difficult to talk about it or mention it, even to the people closest to them. So you sort of never know if introducing it into your game would be a problem. Thus I would strongly suggest to anyone planning to use it to bring it up OoC beforehand, in a way that safely allows anyone with objections to voice them privately out of respect for survivors.

It can be a powerful and useful tool for storytelling, but you must be very sure that your players will take it seriously. If people start joking about it, it becomes a destructive topic.

Berenger
2015-08-17, 08:44 AM
I hope i don't come off as a sociopath, but i sincerely don't understand why rape is where people draw the line.

I believe that's because rape is an astonishingly frequent crime even in otherwise "safe" environments (statistics for most western countries can be found easily enough online). In an ordinary group of gamers, it's highly likely that at least one of them or someone close and dear to them has been affected by sexual violence in a traumatizing fashion at some point of their lives. Thus, you might inadvertently ruin someones mood or, worse, pull his or her trauma trigger (edit: this risk is further amplified by the circumstances explained by tgva8889).

Now, other really bad things that happen in games may or may not make for equally horrifying experiences. But most of them are not a part of most gamers personal lives (or, if involving magic and fantasy creatures, even outright impossible in reality). Conversely, if someone had such unusual experiences in real life, you should avoid other potential triggers just as much as the depiction of rape. For example, you wouldn't do a plot revolving around a cult distributing magic zombie drugs with a player who lost her brother to crystal meth and you wouldn't do a stereotypical "at night, howling orcs torch your hut and chop down your family right in front of you" scene when one of your players is a refugee and lost part of his family in the rwandan genocide.

The difference is that the latter two cases are rare while bad experiences with sexual crimes are much more common.

some guy
2015-08-17, 08:57 AM
I once ran a campaign with a focus on the horrors of war. When I selected my players I told there could be a possibility of rape in the case of capture. It never came up, because they kicked enough butts not to be captured.

For sex as a dm, I usually say "sex happens, you have fun".

I also don't describe torture as a dm.


As a player, I'm a bit more descriptive in the case of sex and torture, but only in groups I know it's accepted. I also feel that as a player I have more freedom in descriptions because I'm on the same level as the other players and don't impede on anyone's agency.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-17, 09:04 AM
I'm not interested in arguments about the historical validity of prisoner rape, or the ultimate refuge of jackass players, "well, that's what my character would do." The fact of the matter is that we are sitting around a table indulging in a power fantasy - and I will not facilitate my players engaging in rape as part of their power fantasy.
I disagree with you. I try to prevent and discourage as much as I can the "power fantasy" aspect from my games. I tend more towards deconstruction and character development (when the players are up for it). In this framework, my medfan games are more Sword & Sorcery or Dark Fantasy than High Fantasy, and the sci-fi ones more Cyberpunk. I believe tragedy, in its essence, has much more to say about our lives, than escapism from the tragedy of human condition can bring us. Or to misquote someone else, RPG is ONLY worthwhile for what it can tell us about the real world; everything else is petty escapism.

Inside the framework you describe, I would certainly take your position. I just disagree with the framework.


A bunch of teenage boys (or young adult men) sitting in a group and blithely talking or joking about rape is not a group that is going to welcome female peers.
Now, the purpose of this thread is to explore if (and how) it can be done without devolving into what you describe.


One important element of rape to understand is that most survivors of rape don't want to talk about it. It's extremely difficult to talk about it or mention it, even to the people closest to them. So you sort of never know if introducing it into your game would be a problem. Thus I would strongly suggest to anyone planning to use it to bring it up OoC beforehand, in a way that safely allows anyone with objections to voice them privately out of respect for survivors.

It can be a powerful and useful tool for storytelling, but you must be very sure that your players will take it seriously. If people start joking about it, it becomes a destructive topic.
I definitively and totally agree. See my comments above about Talyn's post.
Do you have any ideas about how it can be done "right"? What pitfalls to watch for?

Amphetryon
2015-08-17, 09:07 AM
It's just never a good way to increase the enjoyment of anyone at the table. I've had it come up as a Player, in a group where none at the table were under 30 or themselves victims of sexual violence, and it still ended the session an hour and a half early because the Player involved (male, playing female, if it matters) was genuinely bothered and the rest of us were genuinely ticked off and yelling at the DM. As a DM, the only reference I've made to it was in noting it as background for one of the "PCs rescue the damsel-in-distress" trope encounters; the damsel in this case was a dragon, to deliberately distance and subvert the trope from anyone's experience. This apparently made the Players a little happier about their decision to enter into a fracas between a kraken and a dragon, after the fact.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-17, 09:15 AM
I believe that's because rape is an astonishingly frequent crime even in otherwise "safe" environments (statistics for most western countries can be found easily enough online).
Now, other really bad things that happen in games may or may not make for equally horrifying experiences.

The difference is that the latter two cases are rare while bad experiences with sexual crimes are much more common.
Thank you. I hadn't taken this argument this argument into account yet.


I also don't describe torture as a dm.
My first time was not so long ago. I actually did a good job about it. At first, all the players were taking it lightly. At the end, a few of them looked disgusted and others wanted it to stop, just stop. That might seem too much, but I think I managed to transmit the horror of the situation without overplaying it.


As a player, I'm a bit more descriptive in the case of sex and torture, but only in groups I know it's accepted. I also feel that as a player I have more freedom in descriptions because I'm on the same level as the other players and don't impede on anyone's agency.
The same with me.


It's just never a good way to increase the enjoyment of anyone at the table. I've had it come up as a Player, in a group where none at the table were under 30 or themselves victims of sexual violence, and it still ended the session an hour and a half early because the Player involved (male, playing female, if it matters) was genuinely bothered and the rest of us were genuinely ticked off and yelling at the DM.
Seems you can post your story there (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?434043-Worst-DM-you-ve-had).


As a DM, the only reference I've made to it was in noting it as background for one of the "PCs rescue the damsel-in-distress" trope encounters; the damsel in this case was a dragon, to deliberately distance and subvert the trope from anyone's experience. This apparently made the Players a little happier about their decision to enter into a fracas between a kraken and a dragon, after the fact.
Nice subversion!

Reltzik
2015-08-17, 09:23 AM
Some basic guidelines I follow.

1) The players are supposed to be heroes, and the Hollywood style hero, not the Greek Myth style hero. This prevents them from being rapists. Even if it's an evil campaign, they're anti-heroes, and need to remain sympathetic.

2) Loss of character control is not fun for the players. Therefore, the PCs don't get raped. (This is probably extra not-fun for the player, much less the PC, but rather than going through the extra work of quantifying how extra not-fun I decide that this is justification enough.)

3) In terms of setting, backstory, villains, etc, if I think it's likely to come up in a game I'm running, I will quietly take straw polls of the players one-on-one, saying it might be on the horizon. I specifically tell them that if they have any triggers, or boundaries that they don't want crossed, I will respect that, because I'm trying to keep the game from being not-fun for anyone. If even one of them has a problem, I will inform the group that there is an OOC line there for the comfort of one of the players, but not name the player. Other players who will not respect the comfort boundaries of group members will be shown the door.

4) Even if everyone is okay with it, incidents will not be gratuitous. It must be significant to plot, or character development, or emphasizing how evil someone is, or SOMETHING. Simply putting it in there to have it there is pointless.

tgva8889
2015-08-17, 09:30 AM
I definitively and totally agree. See my comments above about Talyn's post.
Do you have any ideas about how it can be done "right"? What pitfalls to watch for?

What follows is my opinion on using rape in storytelling. I'm not an expert in this sort of thing, and I wouldn't suggest using rape as a storytelling tool in every sort of game or even most sorts of games because of my aforementioned risks.

The most important pitfalls to watch out for are that you treat it with respect for what it is. Rape is violence. The thing about roleplaying games is that, oftentimes, the actions players take don't really reflect the weight they have in reality. Most people are deeply affected when put into a life-threatening situation, especially if they are forced to end another life because of it, but in roleplaying games the average character does this all the time. You can't treat rape like that. Rape has deeply scarring effects on people that experience it, even people who have done things that most of us would consider scarring. You have to respect all of these things, and your players have to respect the seriousness of it.

It's hard for me to describe pitfalls of using it, partially because I would never use it because I've been affected by it. But if you are going to use it, I think you have to ask the questions 1) Why am I using rape to tell this story? and 2) Is there another way for me to tell the story I'm trying to tell, or is this actually the most effective way? There's lots of ways to show, for example, that a situation is horrible. You have to be doing something specific to want to show rape. Rape is emblematic of a specifically sexual representation of power, and to use it is to say things about that power structure. In a roleplaying game scenario, you also have to ask 3) Will my players see this the way I am telling it? and 4) Am I being respectful to my player's feelings and desires for the game we're playing together? Anyone trying this, I believe, will make mistakes the first few times; so long as you are respectful to the severity of what you are showing, however, I believe it can be done.

For example, I would strongly suggest that you not have a character rape someone to show that they are capital E Evil. There are many ways to show this, and rape probably isn't even the best way to show this. Rape expresses something different than a lot of kinds of violence.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-17, 09:44 AM
1) The players are supposed to be heroes, and the Hollywood style hero, not the Greek Myth style hero. This prevents them from being rapists. Even if it's an evil campaign, they're anti-heroes, and need to remain sympathetic.
Well, one of my problems is that I tend to prefer the Greek Myth style one.


2) Loss of character control is not fun for the players. Therefore, the PCs don't get raped. (This is probably extra not-fun for the player, much less the PC, but rather than going through the extra work of quantifying how extra not-fun I decide that this is justification enough.)
That's one of the reasons I've avoided it yet. However, in my current campaign, PCs have been cursed, maimed and tortured (not often, and not more than once by PC) as a result of bad choices, not railroading. All these events imply a loss of character control. However, there is an implicit contract that things happen for a reason, a dramatic reason, and not just for the lulz. Coldly, analytically, it has lead me to wonder why I have much more problems with rape than other horrible horrible things.


4) Even if everyone is okay with it, incidents will not be gratuitous. It must be significant to plot, or character development, or emphasizing how evil someone is, or SOMETHING. Simply putting it in there to have it there is pointless.
I agree with the significance to plot part. However, on the "emphasizing evil", I now tend towards tgva8889's opinion.


What follows is my opinion on using rape in storytelling. I'm not an expert in this sort of thing, and I wouldn't suggest using rape as a storytelling tool in every sort of game or even most sorts of games because of my aforementioned risks.
For example, I would strongly suggest that you not have a character rape someone to show that they are capital E Evil. There are many ways to show this, and rape probably isn't even the best way to show this. Rape expresses something different than a lot of kinds of violence.
Thank you for sharing. I agree and will consider the points you have raised.

goto124
2015-08-17, 09:59 AM
Not only do I find it rather uncomfortable (despite being fortunate enough to not be a victim, touch wood), I don't really see why it should be included. Sure, verisimilitude, but it sounds rather like a 'For The Evulz' thing to me. Why not stop at, say, torture (which doesn't have to be described blow-by-blow)?

Why does it have to be sexual?

Broken Twin
2015-08-17, 10:10 AM
I cover my opinion on rape under my rules on sexual violence in games.

1. Not around new players. It's a sensitive subject for certain people (myself included), so it's banned when playing with people whose limits I don't know.

2. Not instigated by the PCs. If that's the type of character you want to play, then I don't want to play with you.

Beyond that, it's inferred at most in play, but I'm okay with it in back stories (within the bounds of good taste). Sex in general I'm perfectly fine with (I tend to favor a one-roll fade-to-black method).

Ralanr
2015-08-17, 11:02 AM
Not only do I find it rather uncomfortable (despite being fortunate enough to not be a victim, touch wood), I don't really see why it should be included. Sure, verisimilitude, but it sounds rather like a 'For The Evulz' thing to me. Why not stop at, say, torture (which doesn't have to be described blow-by-blow)?

Why does it have to be sexual?

The question of the day.

Personally I don't like using rape as a tool to show how horrible and irredeemable a person is. Why? Cause it's up there with Nazi's. That and I believe we can do better at showcasing a horrifying person.

On the table I'd say it should be an offscreen thing if you must put it in there. But if a player attempted it in character, then I'd break character to stop it and leave the game if I was a player. Or just leave.

If I was a DM, I'd pause the game. I don't DM often so I don't know a good move other than talking it out with the group.

YossarianLives
2015-08-17, 11:24 AM
I honestly cannot ever imagine using rape as a plot tool in any of my games and I am at a loss as to why anybody would do so.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-17, 01:09 PM
Not only do I find it rather uncomfortable (despite being fortunate enough to not be a victim, touch wood), I don't really see why it should be included. Sure, verisimilitude, but it sounds rather like a 'For The Evulz' thing to me. Why not stop at, say, torture (which doesn't have to be described blow-by-blow)?

Why does it have to be sexual?
The whole premise of this thread is "why not". There are good arguments for and against above. Excerpt:
Rape is emblematic of a specifically sexual representation of power, and to use it is to say things about that power structure.Regarding sexuality in general, I would add that it is a central part of human condition. Leaving it out not only seems arbitrary, but might be viewed as an incapacity to address an interesting question.


I honestly cannot ever imagine using rape as a plot tool in any of my games and I am at a loss as to why anybody would do so.
The same general reasons authors, of various works of fiction, of differing quality, use it as a plot tool.

Red Fel
2015-08-17, 02:18 PM
Anyone has gaming experiences he'd like to share? or advice?

I happen to agree with those who say you're in the majority. As a rule, as DM I drop the curtain on any sex scene; as a player, I request the same.

I'll share a story that further illustrates my position. I had a DM once. He was a rather good DM, but a rather shoddy person. (This is the one who tried to choke me once, for the record.) He DMed a lot of games in a lot of settings. I once asked him to run a Big Eyes, Small Mouth game (TriStat, not d20), which he refused. He explained to me that he had played an earlier edition of BESM, and had taken an Attractiveness stat, which resulted in his (male) PC being sexually assaulted one night by every female soldier, and several male soldiers, in their platoon. As a result, he had sworn off the system.

I told you that story so that I might tell you this story. This same DM was running an Evil campaign in D&D, which turned into an Evil one-shot, in part because only two of our players were any good at playing Evil. (I was one of them.) My PC was an Incubus, and while I made him a bit racy (his character introduction did not involve pants), I didn't over-sex the character. The DM took umbrage with my character (in the PC's introduction, the DM required him to roll for his "attributes," and I rolled quite well, much to the DM's frustration), so the DM took out his anger in-character. When our party checked into an inn, my character chastised the innkeeper for the condition of the place.

The innkeeper, a private business owner in Thay, responded to the heavily-armed adventurer traveling under Thay's banner by hiring a trio of burly orcs to go to my PC's room at night, sexually assault the PC, and then place the PC in a chastity belt. No rolls, no saves, just the DM informing me of what happened. The other PCs also stopped my PC from exacting bloody vengeance, and my PC snuffed it shortly thereafter, but that's beside the point.

And here's the point: The sole purpose of including rape in that game was to exercise dominance over a player. I'm not saying that's true 100% of the time, but I find that it's fairly accurate. I won't address rape by PCs, because that's a very disturbing thought on its own, but when an NPC rapes a PC, I find that the purpose is to disempower or degrade the PC or the player. There's just no reason, otherwise; an enemy could just as easily kill, knock out, or imprison a PC. Rape is a way of literally adding insult to injury. There is nothing accomplished, in the narrative sense, aside from (1) showing just how evil an NPC is, (2) disgusting the players, or (3) showing just how much power you can exercise over the PCs. None of these are wonderful things.

Vrock_Summoner
2015-08-17, 02:40 PM
Well, an important thing to consider is what game you're playing and who you're playing it with. This has already been said, but bears repeating: If somebody at your table is uncomfortable with a gross deviation from the standard theme of the game, then either that element or possibly the player does not belong at your table. If this isn't a gross deviation, then it's probably the player that doesn't belong; if I'm running D&D and somebody mentions being uncomfortable with killing as anything other than self-defense or something one spends life in prison for, well, that player doesn't belong playing that game, most likely. If somebody killed my family in front of me and slowly tortured and broke down my psyche over the course of months until I was insane enough to consider running FATAL, it would probably be reasonable to ask anybody uncomfortable with rape to leave. But there's more of a grey area for those deviations; just because somebody somewhere might be uncomfortable with rape in a D&D game doesn't mean that all groups ever should restrict themselves from exploring that, but it also needs to be treated with the appropriate respect.

With that out of the way, my views on rape in fantasy are that they should be used not just when plot relevant, but when character-defining, either for the rapist or the victim. Maybe I'm just too devious for my own good, but if my goal is just to portray the bad guy as irredeemably capital-E Evil, there are plenty of other ways he can pull it off, even sticking with the "horrible violation of the victim" theme to show how little he gives a crap. I'll admit that most of my ideas work because my players are generally smart, empathetic people who like to get in their characters' heads, though; the thing about using rape as a tool is that, while this works against it in regards to how many groups you can use with it, everyone immediately recognizes how awful rape is. Even your most no-crap-giving murderhobo will see a rape and think, "That piece of crap, how can s/he do something that awful? (Time to take some time out of my general murder and looting to murder and loot this guy in particular!)" On the other hand, you need somebody who's both getting inside the head of their character and paying a lot of attention to what's going on for them to think about how psychologically horrible it is for the Big Bad to, say, mentally dominate somebody into slowly strangling themselves, or force a child at knifepoint to cut the fingers off his tied-down mother. However, since my group can generally keep that sort of thing in perspective, I'm able to work that into the narrative so that the cruelty actually accentuates the villain rather than seeming thrown-in.

So if I'm going to use rape in a game, it'll be a defining moment. It could, say, provide the victim with both a reason for their hatred of friendly physical contact and an explanation for why they want to get physically strong enough to overpower the person who did that to them; alternatively, if being used to define the villain, it will show not only how depraved the villain is, but also that they consider sex to be a primary means of displaying power. (Hey, this is high fantasy, that's actually a fairly uncommon primary power display for most baddies simply because a lot of them have much more horrible things they can do.) This not only provides some color for your villain (and increases the punch of the event since you aren't using it regularly), but also gives some insight into his priorities and methodology, which the players could use against him. For example, the one time I actually had a rapist villain (again, it's not a regular occurrence for my table, largely because I at least like to pretend I'm more clever than that) one of my players pretended to be a helpless victim of the villain's preferred gender, and since the villain was also somewhat reckless in their lust, this let the rest of the party quite literally catch them with their pants down and gave the group a big advantage in the following battle. That's a bit of an exceptional circumstance, I'll grant, but the point stands: It was useful as specific characterization, but I wouldn't have used it for a general "this guy's messed up" descriptor.

JadedDM
2015-08-17, 02:42 PM
The whole premise of this thread is "why not".

And the overwhelming consensus so far is that it's a bad idea and that even if you can find the perfect situation in which you can use it, somehow avoiding all the pitfalls involved, there is still no good reason to do it.

This is what all these people are trying to tell you, but you don't seem to want to accept that as an answer. Of course, it's your game, and you can do whatever you wish with it. But if you were hoping we would give you 'good reasons' on how to implement rape into your game, I think you will continued to be disappointed, friend.

tgva8889
2015-08-17, 02:47 PM
If you are going to use rape, you have to be using rape because you can't use anything else to get across the specific element of story you are trying to get across, because I do not think that using it when anything else would do is worth the risk and harm that results. So you have to basically be sure that what you want in your story is a character who is a rapist or otherwise sees rape as an acceptable course of action. I cannot imagine a situation in which you would want to do this, but that is the only situation in which I would do this.

I would be very hesitant to allow a rape survivor as a PC backstory unless the player had a very compelling reason to want to specifically play a rape survivor and not someone who had some other atrocity committed against them.

I believe there are situations in which a story involving rape can be a boon to society as a whole. I am not sure that story can be told by a group of people playing a roleplaying game.

LooseCannoneer
2015-08-17, 03:22 PM
If I GM and a player tries to rape something (thankfully hasn't happened yet), I'll ask them if their joking. If they aren't, they get on chance to take it back before I kick them out. Rape has no pace at my table.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-17, 04:00 PM
He was a rather good DM, but a rather shoddy person. (This is the one who tried to choke me once, for the record.)
I read about it in the other thread. That's a funny story to read about. Never had such a bad or dangerous RPG experience :D


And here's the point: The sole purpose of including rape in that game was to exercise dominance over a player. I'm not saying that's true 100% of the time, but I find that it's fairly accurate. I won't address rape by PCs, because that's a very disturbing thought on its own, but when an NPC rapes a PC, I find that the purpose is to disempower or degrade the PC or the player. There's just no reason, otherwise; an enemy could just as easily kill, knock out, or imprison a PC. Rape is a way of literally adding insult to injury. There is nothing accomplished, in the narrative sense, aside from (1) showing just how evil an NPC is, (2) disgusting the players, or (3) showing just how much power you can exercise over the PCs. None of these are wonderful things.
I've seen rape by PCs happen in some games, not mine. As long as it is consistent with the character, I see a lot less problem with it as with an NPC raping a PC, for the exact same reason you developped earlier. Usually, nobody takes what happens to an NPC personnally. I know a few players that can distance themselves from their PC and construct them as wholly separate entity; however, not every player I know is able to do that consistently or totally.


If somebody killed my family in front of me and slowly tortured and broke down my psyche over the course of months until I was insane enough to consider running FATAL
So, I think any discussion involving FATAL is way out of my league.


Even your most no-crap-giving murderhobo will see a rape and think, "That piece of crap, how can s/he do something that awful? (Time to take some time out of my general murder and looting to murder and loot this guy in particular!)"
Huh... Well, depending on their characters and the context, I know players who'd play their characters as not caring THAT much. Heck, you meet people IRL who don't care that much... I don't find it exaggerated to imagine that in a violent medevial world where peole suffer and die easily, at least some characters wouldn't care that much as long as it doesn't happen to them.


On the other hand, you need somebody who's both getting inside the head of their character and paying a lot of attention to what's going on for them to think about how psychologically horrible it is for the Big Bad to, say, mentally dominate somebody into slowly strangling themselves, or force a child at knifepoint to cut the fingers off his tied-down mother. However, since my group can generally keep that sort of thing in perspective, I'm able to work that into the narrative so that the cruelty actually accentuates the villain rather than seeming thrown-in.
So, it also depends on the players, not only on the GM.


That's a bit of an exceptional circumstance, I'll grant, but the point stands: It was useful as specific characterization, but I wouldn't have used it for a general "this guy's messed up" descriptor.
Thank you for sharing.


And the overwhelming consensus so far is that it's a bad idea and that even if you can find the perfect situation in which you can use it, somehow avoiding all the pitfalls involved, there is still no good reason to do it.
I don't see a consensus. I see a majority view (on whose side I am) and a minority (whose arguments I am interested in).


This is what all these people are trying to tell you, but you don't seem to want to accept that as an answer.
I believe you have misread what I've written until now.


Of course, it's your game, and you can do whatever you wish with it. But if you were hoping we would give you 'good reasons' on how to implement rape into your game, I think you will continued to be disappointed, friend.
No, I am not hopping for that. I'm looking for people, specifically GMs, who've already used sexuality and rape as a dramatic tool, and want to know their reasons for doing it, the story context and how it played out. The example given by Vrock_Summoner above describes those three points in detail. That's the kind of story I created this thread for. I am curious about it, because it is something that I never felt confortable to do in my games.
I can find enough reasons by myself not to use sexuality and rape in my games.


If you are going to use rape, you have to be using rape because you can't use anything else to get across the specific element of story you are trying to get across, because I do not think that using it when anything else would do is worth the risk and harm that results. So you have to basically be sure that what you want in your story is a character who is a rapist or otherwise sees rape as an acceptable course of action. I cannot imagine a situation in which you would want to do this, but that is the only situation in which I would do this.
The main argument I see here is verisimilitude. Stock medieval fantasy situation: a city is sacked, players are part of the attacking army. How do players react to various exactions? Until what point are they OK to look the opposite way? What do they condone?
Now, it's a situation that has a lot more element to it. It wouldn't bring up rape only for itself or by itself. My concern is that somehow, putting rape out of the picture makes not much more sense as declaring "no children were harmed". Now, in such a game situation, one could simply dummy out any kind of sexual violence and take into account only looting, violence, arson, murder, torture, etc. and that's what I've done until now.


I believe there are situations in which a story involving rape can be a boon to society as a whole. I am not sure that story can be told by a group of people playing a roleplaying game.
Would you accept to develop this last point? I earnestly don't know where you are going with it.

BootStrapTommy
2015-08-17, 04:28 PM
If we're gunna have have this discussion, might we address the underlying assumptions by which we all seem to draw the line at rape, while PCs are generally infamous for such acts as laying waste to orphanages and genociding entire species?

JadedDM
2015-08-17, 04:34 PM
The main argument I see here is verisimilitude.
Verisimilitude is fine and well, but there are lots of things we don't include in our games despite breaking verisimilitude. Like going to the bathroom, or how you can survive getting stabbed with a sword or hit with a bolt of lightning as long as you have enough HP.

We eschew verisimilitude all the time, usually to the benefit of the game. Yeah, making our characters have to take regular bathroom breaks might be more realistic, but it would break up the flow of the game, which is about slaying dragons (or whatever, based on the game).

Honestly, if I was DMing a scenario you used as an example, the sacking of a city, and any of my players started to complain that the lack of rape was hurting their verisimilitude, I wouldn't worry about how to fix that problem. I'd worry what the heck kind of a person that player was.

Really, it's like asking how to best use the 'rock falls, everyone dies' scenario in a game. I mean, for verisimilitude's sake, sometimes cave-ins occur and people are killed in them. But no matter how realistic it might be, the only purpose it serves is to damage the enjoyment of the game, not enrich it. And there's no way to use it that doesn't make the DM look like a right jerk, either.

Yogibear41
2015-08-17, 04:35 PM
Game I play in the GM has pretty much only one rule, an NPC bad guy will never rape a female players character, everything else is pretty much fair game.

Granted I have never seen anyone's character ever raped in game, I have seen alot of consensual sex, and even one time where I was magical induced into having to basically bed the first thing I found sexually attractive. (damn you nymphology book and your potions) I ended up failing to seduce a young bard, and ended up relieving myself with a middle aged bar wench, who then proceeded to follow my character around for a few days because of my amazing performance. It was rather awkward, seeing as I was actually a wrymling dragon, masquarding as a 60 year old human wizard.

Yogibear41
2015-08-17, 04:37 PM
. Like going to the bathroom


back in the day, guys in full plate and stuff basically just went on themselves while out in the field, as disgusting as that sounds, thats usually what I just say. or since when I play a fighter type I usually make my own armor, I just say I install a latch to go out of ha ha.

martixy
2015-08-17, 05:51 PM
Let's tackle sex first, and leave the heavy sh** for later.

As long as it's fun for everyone, I don't see a problem with including sex as prominently or as little as everyone wants.
It all depends on what your players are comfortable with.

...And willing to suffer through.
Me, personally - I'd be willing to suffer through someone else doing a sex scene about as much as I'd be willing to suffer through any other one-on-one DM-PC or PC-PC interaction.
Depending on my mood I might even go have a coffee break, grab some food and let them have at it as much as they like.
If I was involved, I'd make sure not to hold up the game unnecessarily.

As far as content goes - I've been on the internet for 15+ years. I travel the art circles frequently. I've seen all there is to see. You can bet I try my damnest to insulate myself from the gross fetishes, but I am not offended by them.

Heck, there are whole sites dedicated to sexual RP out there.
Maybe your RP just happens to include a G part. Maybe this just makes it twice as better for your players. Provided they're that kind of player.

In fact, I happen to know of precisely one such game, currently looking for players on roll20.

And sex is fun.
And I imagine RPing a sexual fantasy is also fun. (Though I've only had solo experience on that one, so what do I know. :smallbiggrin:)

Now onto the heavy part:

~snip~

This is just about how I feel.

Do not treat rape as something special mechanically. The same gameplay concerns that apply to other things apply to rape as well. If you wouldn't kidnap the players, and thus take away control of their PC, then don't rape them either.
And even evil PC have to get along with each other, so they have to be likeable to the other players at the table.

And rape is horrible. Other horrible stuff is torture, death(of PC or PC family member), betrayal and the like.
Any of these events is usually highly significant for the character.

And I'm pretty sure if you meticulously detail a torture scene or vividly paint some character performing what is essentially a mortal kombat fatality upon another, you'd get the same reaction as if you gratuitously describe a rape scene. It's just gross.

All of this is part of standard procedure for a game and is content-agnostic.
Said content being rape doesn't add anything special.

The problem comes when an ingame event could relate to an OoC experience - such as some person having first hand or otherwise immediate familiarity with said ordeal(knows a person who went through it, etc).

This is unlikely for torture, death and the like, but it may be more likely for rape.
But again, it is not special.
The same emotionally-charged effect could conceivably be achieved if say, a PCs brother or some other close family member commits suicide under tragic circumstances, and this just so happens to hit a little too close to home for one of the players at the table.
Given equal real(or part of the sufferee) or perceived(on part of the other players) investment/attachment to this NPC character as you would expect for a player and his PC character, the effect is likely to be the same.

This excludes several additional variables that may also exist, such as cultural biases, societal(upbringing, schooling) and environmental(did a person live in a community or household where said tragedy was an issue at some point) factors, and possibly others, which would also come into play in a real-world situation.



~snip~

I do not believe it's just dominance and I think that it can have a legitimate place at the table. Dominance can be deus-ex-machina'd in many more ways than this. At this point you're a horrible DM/co-player on general grounds, not cuz of the specifics of the act.
For an incubus, this type of DM-douchebaggery just fit thematically. For, say a druid he could have gone for your animal companion. You spellbook or familiar as a wizard. Maybe break the legs of your paladin's mount. If you were a raptoran, he might have cut off your wings.

It is, for better or worse, part of the human experience, and as such fair game in any narrative, be that a game, movie, book or play.
But as a DM you have to be careful how you present it. Each medium engages its participants in a different manner psychologically and cognitively.

For D&D this is how I would proceed:
I would talk to each player before hand. If one of them has a problem with rape(or torture, or suicide, or any other similar sensitive subject that might come up - again, not treating rape as special), I will simply avoid that subject.
I will observe good gameplay practices at all times.

For any such highly impactful event, I'll consider the table situation as well, not just the in-game situation.
I will need to have played a lot with my players or maybe have been a long term IRL friends - I'd need to know everyone would rational enough to be able to abstract fantasy from reality. Otherwise I won't bother.
If I know that maybe the one guy/girl can handle it, but I'm unsure about the rest, then I'll have the character kidnapped by the evil guy - I will take the player to the side and deal with the situation privately. If you're going for emotional response, then if the players are there to hear it, you might as well drop in the characters as spectators, because that's how it's gonna feel to the player whose character is being subjected to said ordeal. It will transfer control back to player - he'd be the one to decide when, or if to share that.


...
Okay, wow. This sort of turned from a short opinion post into a psychological essay. Sorry for the wall of text.

@Yogibear41
That's kinda sexist, don'tcha think?
Either rape everyone or no one.

Spartakus
2015-08-17, 05:59 PM
I tried to think of a less tacky title, but this one goes to the point.

I've always refused to describe any scene involving sex (between PCs, NPCs and PCs, etc.), either consensual or not, either dramatic or comedic... My reaction when such a situation occurs is "curtain down, some things happen off-screen, curtain comes back up with the morning sun". I give the lightest description I can, and that does frustrate some players who'd like to insert at least some limited role-play elements, without necessarily describing every detail.


I'm handling this exactly the same way. It is not a big problem for me if a DM handles it otherwise but i would refuse going into details if it involves my charachter. Besides from the posibility of making myself or the other person (DM or involed player(s)) uncomfortable there is another very simple reason for this. Any detail the DM describes can only limit the players fantasy.




The biggest problem I have is with rape.
Now, I never had a problem when other people DM and use it as an element (as long as they are mature about it, or the context is unambiguously absurd).
Neither do I have a problem with graphic torture scenes, that could IC have at least as much consequences on a character, and could be reacted to as badly OOC by players.
Last, I don't have an issue with rape used for backstory.
However, I go out of my way to avoid it's presence in game.

Rape has no place at my table!
RPGs are special in this way for a simple reason. There is no screen or page where the actions happen. Every detail described and even more so evere UNDESCRIBED detail happens in the head of the player/DM. And that is a place where strictly no rape-scene is going to happen.

Torture has a similar problem, although i find myself sometimes describing a dead body in a horrible shape. Whatever happend to that person is then mostly left obscure so the players can imagine what happend while staying in their personal comfort-zones.
The only exception I can think of at the moment is where it is in a clearly comedic context. To provide an example: Next session an ogre is about to torture one of my players by reciting really bad poetry to him. But i can't think of any way to put rape in such a context (An honestly don't want to).

Yogibear41
2015-08-17, 06:24 PM
@Yogibear41
That's kinda sexist, don'tcha think?
Either rape everyone or no one.


Like I said I have never seen anyone's character be raped at all, but I have been explicitly told that a girl's character will never be raped, regardless of how realistic it would be for it to happen.

As far as being sexist, and worrying more about how a girl feels than how a guy feels, the most politically correct way I can say it would be to say we are old school, I suppose.

Generally in any situation where a guy got pouty over something that happened to him in game we would probably look at him, call him something derogatory and tell him to get over it. We are not a very Politically correct group as you might guess. Not that we sit around the table or roll 20 cursing and insulting each other constantly either, I generally prefer to keep the peace and keep my cursing focused on my inability to roll higher than a 4 or the dice 3 or more times in a row. (it happens all the time :smallfrown:)

Granted if the girl in question was a "not very nice person", should would probably end up being treated the same eventually. Never played with a girl who was a jerk before though. Played with plenty of guys who were.

martixy
2015-08-17, 07:14 PM
I must say I care exceptionally little about political correctness. :smalltongue:

I would call out your DM if the disparity ever came into play though.

goto124
2015-08-17, 07:32 PM
Even when I don't (actively) care about being political correct, not only do I get squicked out by the suggestion of rape, I believe it should be used only when absolutely nothing else works, and does more than just 'ooooo look this guy is evulz!'. I think I've seen only one example in this thread where the torture has to be of a sexual nature to fit the theme.

I have a PC whose backstory involves terrible sexists (who also happen to be terrible in general). Even then, I left out rape because 1) Dude, it's rape, ew. 2) I wanted my PC to still be open to sex and sexuality, which rape won't allow for. Mostly 1, to be honest.

Yogibear41
2015-08-17, 08:15 PM
Really rape has only ever come up in games that I play in twice, once being in one of my characters backstorys when his father a soldier from a conquering army which had a germanic descent raped his mother who was closest to be of aborigine descent, and I was born a good ole half breed. Used it to my advantage to could go hang out in the conquering peoples towns and things because I looked like them for the most part unless they payed attention to me. When in truth I was an undercover agent for the rebel people who had been defeated 20 or so years ago muahahah! Then I convinced the rest of my "good" aligned party to help me kill a bunch of the local soldiers garrisoned outside of one of the villages, before I and the other native inhabitant of the party withdrew back into the local mountains where the surviving strongholds of my mothers people remained. Then a few levels later I became a lich, good times really.

The only other time rape came up was when I was playing in another game as basically a CE evil feral goblin, I ambushed a human on the road and did the dirty and killed her, but to be honest even thought its what my little evil feral character would have done, I felt kind of dirty doing it, and it upset the girl, who was also playing an evil goblin in the group, so I never did it again.

BootStrapTommy
2015-08-17, 08:24 PM
2) I wanted my PC to still be open to sex and sexuality, which rape won't allow for. As a victim, I can assure you that this is not always, or even commonly, the case. We don't all suffer from PTSD flashbacks in the bedroom.

UXLZ
2015-08-17, 09:42 PM
I just like to say when first setting up a game "Yes, rape and other sexual violence such as that can and do occur in this setting, albeit extremely rarely. No, none of it will happen on-screen in excruciating detail, but if you take issue with the fact that such things simply exist in the world, this game is not for you."

Honestly, I've never actually used sex or rape in any of my games, but I always add that caveat so players don't feel betrayed if I ever *do* include it for some reason.

HolyCouncilMagi
2015-08-17, 10:00 PM
So, I think any discussion involving FATAL is way out of my league.
[SELF-REDACTED]

On second thought, let's cut out the middleman (mostly because I wasn't entirely sure how it interacted with forum rules, so let's just be safe). Vrock had it right; no sane person is in FATAL's league.

Coidzor
2015-08-17, 10:49 PM
Concerning rape, I feel avoiding the subject can harm the verisimilitude in some situations: soldiers sacking a city

Why are you describing minutia when they already know that the city has fallen?


characters being captured by enemies

Why are you choosing to have villains who are that creepy or obsessed with the PCs?


As a victim, I can assure you that this is not always, or even commonly, the case. We don't all suffer from PTSD flashbacks in the bedroom.

I don't particularly want to know which of my fellow players have been raped, it's really none of my business. So I don't really want the topic broached because that increases the likelihood that I'll find out, either from the conversation beforehand about boundaries and comfort zones or the fallout from the introduction of rape as an active story element.

Elvenoutrider
2015-08-17, 11:07 PM
Rape is treated as it is and gets the reaction it does in games and from TV viewers because it is a crime that is still shockingly common in the western world, even in and especially in places that people are meant to be safe. It is statistically likely that at least one person in a standard group of 5 will have some form of sexual assault in their past. When you add gender into the equation the numbers become even more horrifying. Add that to the fact that the gaming community doesn't have a great track record when it comes to the treatment of female players or characters. I have yet to meet a female gamer who doesn't have some kind of horror story about her treatment in One group or another. Between the numbers above and the reputation of gamers, deserved or otherwise, as a whole it is very easy for a scene involving rape, no matter how well written or intentioned in a story, to put pne of your players in a bad place.

Now compare this to the torture scenes in game of thrones and, while cringe worthy and easily able to keep you up, isn't the sort of thing anyone in your group is statistically likely to have dealt with. Your risk here isn't so much reminding a player of a bad time as is making a squeamish player leave the table for a bit.

The thing is there are very few people that would enjoy hearing about the suffering of others in detail. I don't think I would get along with those players so I don't play with them - the wonders of the internet and Skype have allowed me a very large applicant pool for my games.

I am a fan of Grimdark settings and I have used rape and torture to forward my plot but I see little to gain from having my players walk in during the sequence versus showing up before or after and having a chance to stop it or walking in on the aftermath. The actual act is never described but is left to be inferred from the description of the victim. These parts also provoke the greatest emotional response, I have found.

As for describing consensual sex, honestly I have trouble enough trying to do accents for my npcs. Maybe it's my religious upbringing but I don't think I could bring myself to describe a sex scene for a room full of gamers. I acknowledge this is a personal handicap but I'm willing to bet that I'm not in a minority of the gaming community in feeling that way

I admittedly have yet to run my most recent Grimdark game for anything other than male players so maybe everything I think is wrong and my writing will need to be changed.

I'm hoping I didn't misrepresent the issue in any of this post.

tgva8889
2015-08-17, 11:21 PM
Would you accept to develop this last point? I earnestly don't know where you are going with it.

In most situations, you do not need to describe intimately what is happening when it is terrible. You can simply say "There has been [list of things there has been]," or "This evil character/group committed [list of atrocities]." Also, you can do very powerful things by describing effects rather than events. However, doing this with rape or sexual assault or any sort of sexual violence is problematic because of how widespread the effects are. At the average gaming table, it is highly likely that someone has been affected by sexual violence, whether they be a survivor or they know a survivor. I know this is not a universal thing, but I have known some people to react extremely poorly to simply hearing the word. I can't imagine how such a person would react if you described the aftereffects, nor would I want to be present or in any part responsible if such a thing did occur unless I had that person's consent to discuss it.

I wrote a long argumentative post about rape, but I can't bring myself to post it. The long and short of it is that unlike other atrocities, rape represents something very specific which I have trouble writing out publicly because doing so makes me physically ill.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-18, 04:50 AM
If we're gunna have have this discussion, might we address the underlying assumptions by which we all seem to draw the line at rape, while PCs are generally infamous for such acts as laying waste to orphanages and genociding entire species?
As an example, while running the 3.5 D&D module The Sunless Citadel as a one-shot game, here's a couple things my players did. Now, I had forbidden anyone from playing Evil characters, in order to prevent any inter-party conflict (which I can accept in games with longer scopes). The first level of the dungeon contains two warring tribes, one of kobolds and one of goblins. The adventure is set up in a way as to enable an alliance with the kobolds against the goblins.
One player (male), rolling quite bad on his stats decides to play a female Chaotic Neutral orc barbarian (everything in strength, nothing much in mental stats) whose motivation for the adventure is that the goblin tribe sold a poisonous apple that killed her brother.
Another player (male) opts to play a male lecherous drunkard Chaotic Neutral cleric of some war god I can't remember right now. He asked for two pieces of custom equipment: a chastity belt, so that his character wouldn't be molested easily in case of capture (which I'd never do as a GM, but the player just wanted to play that kind of character) and a few bottles of very very cheap booze. His character's motivation entering the dungeon was to find a paladin who'd gone earlier and duel him to settle who's the most macho and whose god's the strongest.
None of the three other characters were Good, or relevant to the rest of the story.
Just to hammer a point, I let the players go all out with whatever they wanted, as long as it was balanced, as it was just a one-shot game. I didn't expect them to play archetypal sociopaths...
First weird thing that happened is when, after a predictable alliance with the kobolds, the latter mentioned some goblin prisoners (that the kobolds are already using as food source in the adventure). The drunkard cleric insisted on interrogating them. The famished broken wretched goblins had not much to tell, but to make sure, the cleric decides to torture one. Said torture involves insertion of the handle of his war-axe. Other players and me were grossed out, I cut the scene short. Everyone is okay to keep playing on. The thing is, it was a character defining moment albeit a very gross one and barely tolerable one.
After having made sure of the goblins absence of relevant knowledge, the cleric buys one of them from the kobolds and enslaves him. The party goes on into the dungeon, using the hapless goblin as a meat shield and trigger for traps. The goblin is killed after a few rooms, his body his hacked and stuffed into some chest "in case the party later runs out of supplies" or "maybe they can sell it back to the kobolds".
Later in the game, after winning an epic fight against the main force of the goblin tribe, the characters reach a room they've inferred full of goblins. The orc barbarian, her blood pumped up, barges into the room, hacking left and right. Not realizing right away the goblins are "civilians" (elderly, female, children...). Once she realized that, she keeps massacring them, since you know, vengeance for her brother. The Cleric joins in the massacre, since you know, vae victis. And the kobolds are going to eat any goblin survivor anyway, right? The rest of the party tries to reason with the two players, demonstrating that it's more profitable to enslave some of the goblins than outright killing them.

Of these two events, the torture of a few lone goblin prisoners (that might be constructed as sexual assault) was more disturbing for me, as a DM. That bugs me out.


Verisimilitude is fine and well, but there are lots of things we don't include in our games despite breaking verisimilitude. Like going to the bathroom, or how you can survive getting stabbed with a sword or hit with a bolt of lightning as long as you have enough HP.
This is where we differ. In my ongoing campaign, going to the bathroom is regularly mentioned, in passing. A few of my players mention doing it from time to time, when breaking camp, getting to an inn, after drinking a few beers, etc. It has also come up for characters wearing armor, in situations they're wearing the armor for more than a few hours at a time. (It doesn't smell or look good.) One player has made a point of mentioning that his unarmored character often looses control of all bodily functions under the influence of adrenaline.
Ain't calling it the Dung Ages (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDungAges) for nuthin'.
Again, this is not something I've asked my players to come-up with. They do it, and little details like this make a story richer.
It has also come up in a way relevant to the story. One female character in the group posed as a male to join the local military. She kept posing as male for the party after meeting them. OOC, another player discussed how it was possible to travel together for months and not realize that she was relieving herself differently.
Now, it's seems like an awful lot of energy dedicated to literal crap, but I'm concentrating them from four years of campaigning.


We eschew verisimilitude all the time, usually to the benefit of the game. Yeah, making our characters have to take regular bathroom breaks might be more realistic, but it would break up the flow of the game, which is about slaying dragons (or whatever, based on the game).
That might be true about D&D, for example. Then you have settings like Black Crusades with a god, Slaanesh, dedicated to nasty things.


Honestly, if I was DMing a scenario you used as an example, the sacking of a city, and any of my players started to complain that the lack of rape was hurting their verisimilitude, I wouldn't worry about how to fix that problem. I'd worry what the heck kind of a person that player was.
It doesn't work like this. None of my players would complain about that. However, actively pretending this kind of things never happen might hurt the story at some points.


Really, it's like asking how to best use the 'rock falls, everyone dies' scenario in a game. I mean, for verisimilitude's sake, sometimes cave-ins occur and people are killed in them. But no matter how realistic it might be, the only purpose it serves is to damage the enjoyment of the game, not enrich it. And there's no way to use it that doesn't make the DM look like a right jerk, either.
It already came up as background in some dungeon in that campaign. I could see using a none-immediately lethal cave-in as a story development tool.


Game I play in the GM has pretty much only one rule, an NPC bad guy will never rape a female players character, everything else is pretty much fair game.
Another anecdote. More than a decade ago, I met once, in passing, an older female player who said she'd never ever play again a female character, because DMs she played with had a tendency to submit her characters to rape and then make them pregnant. I was just beginning to play RPGs, and found that totally and definitively unacceptable.


Let's tackle sex first, and leave the heavy sh** for later.
Thanks for taking the time to make a long and constructed answer. I'm not going to comment on every aspect of it, because I find it solid on itself.


@Yogibear41
That's kinda sexist, don'tcha think?
Either rape everyone or no one.
However, without discussing their negative impact, cultural constructions of female and male rape differ a lot. This could entail a difference of treatment in any kind of fiction.


I'm handling this exactly the same way. It is not a big problem for me if a DM handles it otherwise but i would refuse going into details if it involves my charachter. Besides from the posibility of making myself or the other person (DM or involed player(s)) uncomfortable there is another very simple reason for this. Any detail the DM describes can only limit the players fantasy.
That is an interesting argument, that hasn't come up yet, thank you.


Rape has no place at my table!
RPGs are special in this way for a simple reason. There is no screen or page where the actions happen. Every detail described and even more so evere UNDESCRIBED detail happens in the head of the player/DM. And that is a place where strictly no rape-scene is going to happen.
It's not much different of reading a rape scene in any book. I can't help visualizing it, in my head.


To provide an example: Next session an ogre is about to torture one of my players by reciting really bad poetry to him. But i can't think of any way to put rape in such a context (An honestly don't want to).
The first example given by Yogibear41 contains an attempt at comedic inversion of rape, whatever one can think of the comedic potential of the subject.


On second thought, let's cut out the middleman (mostly because I wasn't entirely sure how it interacted with forum rules, so let's just be safe). Vrock had it right; no sane person is in FATAL's league.
Who talked about sanity? Mine might have issues, but even if my entire psyche breaks down I have the belief and hope I'd never get into FATAL territory.


Between the numbers above and the reputation of gamers, deserved or otherwise, as a whole it is very easy for a scene involving rape, no matter how well written or intentioned in a story, to put pne of your players in a bad place.
Yet, one might argue that not tackling the subject in a mature way and controlled environment does only help to maintain a misogynist statu quo.


Now compare this to the torture scenes in game of thrones and, while cringe worthy and easily able to keep you up, isn't the sort of thing anyone in your group is statistically likely to have dealt with.
Not statistically likely, but not impossible either. This is statistically more important for people running away from autocratic countries.
Even if the stats may not be quantitatively comparable, you could make the same qualitative argument about a white first world people culture in RPG preventing people from other cultures to enjoy it.


I am a fan of Grimdark settings and I have used rape and torture to forward my plot but I see little to gain from having my players walk in during the sequence versus showing up before or after and having a chance to stop it or walking in on the aftermath. The actual act is never described but is left to be inferred from the description of the victim. These parts also provoke the greatest emotional response, I have found.
This is an interesting argument, thank you.


As for describing consensual sex, honestly I have trouble enough trying to do accents for my npcs. Maybe it's my religious upbringing but I don't think I could bring myself to describe a sex scene for a room full of gamers. I acknowledge this is a personal handicap but I'm willing to bet that I'm not in a minority of the gaming community in feeling that way
I concur.


In most situations, you do not need to describe intimately what is happening when it is terrible. You can simply say "There has been [list of things there has been]," or "This evil character/group committed [list of atrocities]." Also, you can do very powerful things by describing effects rather than events. However, doing this with rape or sexual assault or any sort of sexual violence is problematic because of how widespread the effects are. At the average gaming table, it is highly likely that someone has been affected by sexual violence, whether they be a survivor or they know a survivor. I know this is not a universal thing, but I have known some people to react extremely poorly to simply hearing the word. I can't imagine how such a person would react if you described the aftereffects, nor would I want to be present or in any part responsible if such a thing did occur unless I had that person's consent to discuss it.

I wrote a long argumentative post about rape, but I can't bring myself to post it. The long and short of it is that unlike other atrocities, rape represents something very specific which I have trouble writing out publicly because doing so makes me physically ill.
Again, thank you for your intervention. However, I'd like to tell you that I'd rather you don't push yourself into anything making you feel bad for the sake of this unimportant discussion.

Socksy
2015-08-18, 06:30 AM
Game I play in the GM has pretty much only one rule, an NPC bad guy will never rape a female players character, everything else is pretty much fair game.

Granted I have never seen anyone's character ever raped in game, I have seen alot of consensual sex, and even one time where I was magical induced into having to basically bed the first thing I found sexually attractive. (damn you nymphology book and your potions) I ended up failing to seduce a young bard, and ended up relieving myself with a middle aged bar wench, who then proceeded to follow my character around for a few days because of my amazing performance. It was rather awkward, seeing as I was actually a wrymling dragon, masquarding as a 60 year old human wizard.

Emphasis mine.
So... drugging an infant to desperately need sex is okay, as long as their player is male?! What the f**k?!

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-18, 06:41 AM
Emphasis mine.
So... drugging an infant to desperately need sex is okay, as long as their player is male?! What the f**k?!
I was expecting to witness such a reaction sooner or later... I had the same first reaction, but chose to leave it aside as it seems everyone involved viewed that episode in a humorous or absurd context (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnfortunateImplications).

Telonius
2015-08-18, 06:50 AM
In general, I avoid it. At least one (possibly more, but one that I know) of my regular players is a survivor of abuse, and that is not something I'm ever going to bring up in a gaming context.

Hawkstar
2015-08-18, 08:16 AM
back in the day, guys in full plate and stuff basically just went on themselves while out in the field, as disgusting as that soundsI find this statement to be of extremely dubious credibility, and likely a myth to perpetuate the "Medieval people were barbaric morons" stereotype.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-18, 10:03 AM
I find this statement to be of extremely dubious credibility, and likely a myth to perpetuate the "Medieval people were barbaric morons" stereotype.
You know there's a reason why a number of modern day soldiers wear adult diapers?

Frozen_Feet
2015-08-18, 10:59 AM
Let's start with the fact that my very first tabletop character was raped. This didn't scare me away from RPGs nor make me hate my GM. It was Cyberpunk. People flaying each other with cybernetic trinkets was a thinking, my brother's character was made to shovel **** untill he drowned in it, so it didn't stand out as something specially awful.

I've also run stuff like LotFP's Death Love Doom to my female friends and their mother. No-one got panic attacks, I was not burned as a witch and everyone found it an enjoyable session.

People talk a lot about how these things are good if "done well" or with some nebulous veneer of "maturity". In my experience, the only people with a taboo against these things are adults with too much sociopolitical awareness they can't discard for course of a game. Children, natural little sociopaths as they are, are happy to rape, murder and torture each other's characters and find it great fun. Though I suspect most of them only do it to make their adult GM squirm. Once a GM shows they're immune to being shocked by such shenanigans, they usually drop it.

The Insanity
2015-08-18, 11:23 AM
There's lots of sex in our games. Especially when it's just me and my girlfriend. We're just that kind of people.
Rape. I have no problem with it as long as it makes sense.
In one of my games a male PC raped a female warrior. She said that she could only be with a man that can defeat her (she was a quite powerful warrior). He defeated her with ease and claimed his reward on the spot.
The same character, currently an NPC, tends to rape attractive female enemies as punishment for trying to kill him. Many of those women are currently his loyal servants.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-18, 11:27 AM
inb4 someone takes this as a flame bait...

In my experience, the only people with a taboo against these things are adults with too much sociopolitical awareness they can't discard for course of a game.
... and also, maybe people who've had a traumatic experience they haven't yet managed to entirely cope with. (As many people in this thread keep repeating.)
Back to my experience, I'm OK with sexual themes in games, as a player. They make me deeply uneasy (still not a taboo) as a GM.
Whatever happens to one of my characters, I'd be fine with it, as long as I feel it doesn't happen just because the GM is a jerk. I have a harder time putting my players characters into such ordeals as a GM.
So maybe, yeah, there are some things I can't coldly discard when I'm running a game. Because as a DM, I believe that I'm responsible for the game, and of the enjoyment of everyone.
Does that make more sense to you?

EDIT:

There's lots of sex in our games. Especially when it's just me and my girlfriend. We're just that kind of people.
Rape. I have no problem with it as long as it makes sense.
In one of my games a male PC raped a female warrior. She said that she could only be with a man that can defeat her (she was a quite powerful warrior). He defeated her with ease and claimed his reward on the spot.
The same character, currently an NPC, tends to rape attractive female enemies as punishment for trying to kill him. Many of those women are currently his loyal servants.
Have we just entered the BDSM rape-fetish hentai doujin dimension edition of D&D? There are image boards for that, you know...
That sounds like a fetishization of rape that is, well, a fetishization...

ScrivenerofDoom
2015-08-18, 11:28 AM
Verisimilitude be damned: my games do not have sex, rape, or any harm coming to children. There is violence but even that is, for all intents and purposes, cartoon-ish.

My games are roughly the same rating as a Marvel movie. And I believe that's the way it should be.

Some of the posts here are just creepy.

Ralanr
2015-08-18, 11:35 AM
Verisimilitude be damned: my games do not have sex, rape, or any harm coming to children. There is violence but even that is, for all intents and purposes, cartoon-ish.

My games are roughly the same rating as a Marvel movie. And I believe that's the way it should be.

Some of the posts here are just creepy.

There's lots of sex in our games. Especially when it's just me and my girlfriend. We're just that kind of people.
Rape. I have no problem with it as long as it makes sense.
In one of my games a male PC raped a female warrior. She said that she could only be with a man that can defeat her (she was a quite powerful warrior). He defeated her with ease and claimed his reward on the spot.
The same character, currently an NPC, tends to rape attractive female enemies as punishment for trying to kill him. Many of those women are currently his loyal servants.

Like so.

Low blow or not, that's a little ****ed up. The Red Sonja reference alone reminds me of the gender rpg tropes thread.

Granted many games involve armed mercenaries going into another races territory and clearing them out violently for as petty a thing as being too close to a human settlement.

But Rape is a special kind of evil. You can always justify genocide, but you can not justify rape and stay in a "good" light.

Edit: The view of the setting usually contradicts the view of the players/audience. I've more than once cheered for protagonists as they did acts that are actually quite horrific, like when the Order cleared out all of those Goblins in the beginning.

Frozen_Feet
2015-08-18, 11:47 AM
... and also, maybe people who've had a traumatic experience they haven't yet managed to entirely cope with. (As many people in this thread keep repeating.)

The only time a player at my table expressed severe anxiety at something in a game was in reaction to a giant spider. She coped with it by shutting her ears and eyes for five minutes and then rejoined the game no prob.

I'd wager majority of people here don't engage in extensive prep talks or self-censor in case someone has arachnophobia. Or do a similar checking for other common phobias and crimes which could leave someone with a panic order despite many of those things being just as common as sexual assault. In fact, plain assault counts, and comes up in RPGs far more often.

The truth of the matter is that typical tabletop portrayal of violence, sex and sexual violence is less intensive than what you can see on TV movies after 9 PM, and your typical player watched those movies behind their parents' backs since they were 12. This includes any people with traumatic past. Chances are that if they're still sore enough to have serious risk of panic attack, they won't show up in a game session. If they do show up, chances are they won't be broken by game events, or at least have enough iniative to do what the girl above did and take a break from the game.

Hence, walking on eggshells around the issue is pointless.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-18, 12:39 PM
If they do show up, chances are they won't be broken by game events, or at least have enough iniative to do what the girl above did and take a break from the game.
I'll leave aside the many issues with comparing arachnophobia and trauma caused by rape, as I believe the following discussion would degenerate.
Now, regarding the above quoted statement, you do realize that more than one person in the thread states the contrary, right? It's not that you are not entitled to your opinion. It's more that it doesn't seem much nuanced, neither does it take into account other people's opinion or sensitivity. Not that you have do any of those either, but then one might wonder why you care at all to intervene?

For education purposes, let me state that psychological healing, actually like physiological healing, is not a purely mechanic process. There's no threshold before which you can break and after which you are definitively cured. Things are more fluid. You can believe that you are ready to confront yourself to past trauma, just to discover you're not over it yet. Moreover, you might have been "cured" for the last few years, have one of those days and suddenly undergoe what you call a "panic attack" anyway.

HolyCouncilMagi
2015-08-18, 12:55 PM
But Rape is a special kind of evil. You can always justify genocide, but you can not justify rape and stay in a "good" light.

This actually highlights another interesting problem with using rape in games that sort of outlines the human tendency to have knee-jerk reactions to things they personally recognize even when they can come at equally horrible but less familiar things from a more logical perspective.

I have not, as a DM, used sex or rape as a tool in my games, and only generally have sex happen if a PC is specifically pursuing a romance with an NPC. At most, it has been implied... Frankly, I make the fade to black happen well before they're even in the bedroom or wherever. "What's that, you and the prince are running up to share a room in the inn? Cool, well now that you're running up the stairs, we're going to not bring the camera back to focus on you again tonight. What's everyone else doing before bed?"

However, I have seen rape used in games when I was a player, and there was always a very interesting effect I noticed when one of the more common other DMs (whose games actually tended to benefit from how dense he was about social boundaries) tried to spice up a few games with morality twists. He revealed the backstory of his Big Bad in one game, not any legitimate justification for his actions or anything but just a backstory, involving the Big Bad's family and friends getting killed by agents of the Good gods when he was a child. Yes, it was horrible, but it didn't really make his current multiplanar extinction plan any less evil. Nonetheless, the rest of the party aside from myself ended up taking a sympathetic stance and looking for ways to bring out the bad guy's "inner goodness," simply because he had a sad backstory explaining what led up to this. On the other hand, that same DM in a later game had a mid-level antagonist for the party who we busted in on in the immediate aftermath of him raping a well-liked NPC, and naturally, we all attacked him with vigor. He managed to escape, and we found out later that he actually had a parasitic entity inside him that would kill him if he didn't obey its commands, which were generic Evil things at the moment because (as we discovered several sessions further down the line) the parasitic hive mind had yet to develop very much and was currently just a mass of Evil with low intelligence putting spores in random innocents. Realizing we had a head-start, we put a plan into motion to sever the connection between the hive mind and the parasites long enough to remove them, and when we found the guy again after doing so, he was actually actively on his knees begging for forgiveness from the NPC he raped. Despite this, the party (again, excluding myself) decided that if he were anything other than Evil, he would've let the parasite kill him rather than committing such atrocities under its death threats, and they attacked him. The session ended early that day, with the Paladin's player enraged over his Smite Evil not being effective against the guy, claiming that the DM was a rape advocate because he tried to present a rapist in a non-negative light.

So yeah. I won't pass judgment on my fellow players, but I will say that I'm personally incapable of understanding how somebody could consider a person more morally justified in trying to end billions of lives because something bad happened to them as a child than the guy who committed a rape because he was actively threatened with death if he did not do so. I see the first person as horrifyingly Evil almost beyond compare, while the second guy could very well be Neutral. But I imagine this isn't the common perception largely because "genocide of vast swathes of people" isn't a concept that hits close to home for the majority of tabletop gamers, so they don't feel the Evil of it as much as with rape, which has hit a lot of people's lives in one way or another... Or something along those lines. I'm too tired to accentuate a point right now, so I'm going to just leave this one here and let you guys figure out what I'm trying to say.

Frozen_Feet
2015-08-18, 01:05 PM
The point about other common sources of trauma is important because it highlights the difference between how taboo versus non-taboo topics are treated. Many people in this thread try to rationalize the taboo aspect of sexual violence by appealing to things which would be just as true of other kinds of violence. Yet demonstrably those victims of other kinds of violence don't need such a fuzz to be made of it.

I can believe some people are fragile enough to get a panic attack from verbal description, just as well as I can believe someone can get fractured bones from holding up a punching bag. What I don't believe is that tabletop games should generally be adjusted to the former, just as I don't believe karate basics should be adjusted to the latter. You say this does not account for sensitivity of people. In my experience, it does, because most people are not that sensitive. I speak of typical people; you should consider the people in threads like these are atypical.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-18, 01:11 PM
Or something along those lines. I'm too tired to accentuate a point right now, so I'm going to just leave this one here and let you guys figure out what I'm trying to say.
I think I get your meaning. It is an interesting development on Ralanr's argumentation.
Again, just my two cents: as an individual, I have been subjected to various kind of violent situations, none of them as socially taboo as rape, most fortunately. I believe I have a good understanding of what them imply, for a person. However, none of them make me uneasy in the least when brought up in a game. Sexuality, and rape particularly, make me uneasy.
Even if I logically understand your argument about "not hitting close to home", I believe it is not effective, in my case at least and maybe in other cases.

Ralanr
2015-08-18, 01:12 PM
This actually highlights another interesting problem with using rape in games that sort of outlines the human tendency to have knee-jerk reactions to things they personally recognize even when they can come at equally horrible but less familiar things from a more logical perspective.

I have not, as a DM, used sex or rape as a tool in my games, and only generally have sex happen if a PC is specifically pursuing a romance with an NPC. At most, it has been implied... Frankly, I make the fade to black happen well before they're even in the bedroom or wherever. "What's that, you and the prince are running up to share a room in the inn? Cool, well now that you're running up the stairs, we're going to not bring the camera back to focus on you again tonight. What's everyone else doing before bed?"

However, I have seen rape used in games when I was a player, and there was always a very interesting effect I noticed when one of the more common other DMs (whose games actually tended to benefit from how dense he was about social boundaries) tried to spice up a few games with morality twists. He revealed the backstory of his Big Bad in one game, not any legitimate justification for his actions or anything but just a backstory, involving the Big Bad's family and friends getting killed by agents of the Good gods when he was a child. Yes, it was horrible, but it didn't really make his current multiplanar extinction plan any less evil. Nonetheless, the rest of the party aside from myself ended up taking a sympathetic stance and looking for ways to bring out the bad guy's "inner goodness," simply because he had a sad backstory explaining what led up to this. On the other hand, that same DM in a later game had a mid-level antagonist for the party who we busted in on in the immediate aftermath of him raping a well-liked NPC, and naturally, we all attacked him with vigor. He managed to escape, and we found out later that he actually had a parasitic entity inside him that would kill him if he didn't obey its commands, which were generic Evil things at the moment because (as we discovered several sessions further down the line) the parasitic hive mind had yet to develop very much and was currently just a mass of Evil with low intelligence putting spores in random innocents. Realizing we had a head-start, we put a plan into motion to sever the connection between the hive mind and the parasites long enough to remove them, and when we found the guy again after doing so, he was actually actively on his knees begging for forgiveness from the NPC he raped. Despite this, the party (again, excluding myself) decided that if he were anything other than Evil, he would've let the parasite kill him rather than committing such atrocities under its death threats, and they attacked him. The session ended early that day, with the Paladin's player enraged over his Smite Evil not being effective against the guy, claiming that the DM was a rape advocate because he tried to present a rapist in a non-negative light.

So yeah. I won't pass judgment on my fellow players, but I will say that I'm personally incapable of understanding how somebody could consider a person more morally justified in trying to end billions of lives because something bad happened to them as a child than the guy who committed a rape because he was actively threatened with death if he did not do so. I see the first person as horrifyingly Evil almost beyond compare, while the second guy could very well be Neutral. But I imagine this isn't the common perception largely because "genocide of vast swathes of people" isn't a concept that hits close to home for the majority of tabletop gamers, so they don't feel the Evil of it as much as with rape, which has hit a lot of people's lives in one way or another... Or something along those lines. I'm too tired to accentuate a point right now, so I'm going to just leave this one here and let you guys figure out what I'm trying to say.

That mentality sounds similar to "A single death is tragic, a million is a statistic".

Except it's not a tyrant who is saying it, but a hero.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-18, 01:31 PM
The point about other common sources of trauma is important because it highlights the difference between how taboo versus non-taboo topics are treated. Many people in this thread try to rationalize the taboo aspect of sexual violence by appealing to things which would be just as true of other kinds of violence. Yet demonstrably those victims of other kinds of violence don't need such a fuzz to be made of it.
My opinion about rape is that it is a kind of violence that has many specificities. Not necessarily materialy different, but socially and culturally constructed in such a different way that an individual subjected to it cannot escape some of those specificities. Now, I also believe it can be addressed without people freaking out.


I can believe some people are fragile enough to get a panic attack from verbal description, just as well as I can believe someone can get fractured bones from holding up a punching bag. What I don't believe is that tabletop games should generally be adjusted to the former, just as I don't believe karate basics should be adjusted to the latter. You say this does not account for sensitivity of people. In my experience, it does, because most people are not that sensitive.
Bad choice of comparison :smallamused:
I've been practicing that martial art for a longer time than I've been DMing, and I've been DMing for more than half my life. In the style I practice, we go out of our way to make training possible, whatever the age, the gender, the possibility of handicap, etc. as long as practitioners shows motivation to better themselves. This doesn't mean we don't keep high standards. It means we don't ask for much more than a will to train at the begining.
Now again, I don't say each table should adjust its use of rape and sexuality to the same standard. As much as I don't believe each dojo needs to train in the exact same way. I have the strong belief that the majority of people I play with wouldn't be "broken" by rape being brought up in game (and there are a few examples above). However, I have a big difficulty wrapping my head around it in the games where I DM.
If you look at the opinions and stories above, the vast majority have that in common that they show a beforehand position on the subject. There are only one or two examples of people describing an evolution of opinion one way or the other.


I speak of typical people; you should consider the people in threads like these are atypical.
I take this as a compliment! Now, if I was in a confrontational mood, I'd plainly ask you to define "typical", just to be able to retort that there are good chances what you see as "typical" people in your part of the world are not that "typical" in mine.

kivzirrum
2015-08-18, 01:34 PM
For my part as a DM, I just don't allow that sort of thing, and if my players have a problem with it, I just explain to them where I'm coming from. I mean I'm not a prude or anything, I generally consider myself a sex-positive feminist, but roleplaying something like that in detail is unnecessary I find. If a PC has a spouse or a lover or something, then what they do is implied, I'd say. I'm not interested in getting derailed by such goings-on. Usually, explaining this viewpoint has been enough to prevent any problems at the table.

Rape is not allowed in my games. Maybe it can be alluded to but if one of the players wants their character to do that, they can't. If they object, they can leave. It's too touchy a subject to treat casually and you don't know what everyone's past is. Some people have different thresholds and I want all my players to be comfortable. It's supposed to be fun for everyone. It's just not something that I think is ever necessary to include in a game, so it's so not worth the potential disruption of the game--and people's peace of mind--that it represents.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-18, 01:41 PM
Rape is not allowed in my games. Maybe it can be alluded to but if one of the players wants their character to do that, they can't. If they object, they can leave. It's too touchy a subject to treat casually and you don't know what everyone's past is. Some people have different thresholds and I want all my players to be comfortable. It's supposed to be fun for everyone. It's just not something that I think is ever necessary to include in a game, so it's so not worth the potential disruption of the game--and people's peace of mind--that it represents.
One could use the same argument against representation of any kind of sexuality or violence in any media. And it's been used that way (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoralGuardians).
I'm not accusing you of anything, and I understand you restrict your opinion to your table; it's just that this argument doesn't scale well outside one gaming group in particular.

kivzirrum
2015-08-18, 01:48 PM
One could use the same argument against representation of any kind of sexuality or violence in any media. And it's been used that way (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoralGuardians).
I'm not accusing you of anything, and I understand you restrict your opinion to your table; it's just that this argument doesn't scale well outside one gaming group in particular.

You're right, and I'm super opposed to the idea of "moral guardians" so it's DEFINITELY not something I want to be. I would never tell anyone not to include it in their games. I've been in games where it was used (though personally, I was never comfortable with it, and in one case was very unhappy when the DM had something brutal happen to one of the PCs because the player annoyed him). It simply doesn't belong in any of my games.

HolyCouncilMagi
2015-08-18, 01:52 PM
You're right, and I'm super opposed to the idea of "moral guardians" so it's DEFINITELY not something I want to be. I would never tell anyone not to include it in their games. I've been in games where it was used (though personally, I was never comfortable with it, and in one case was very unhappy when the DM had something brutal happen to one of the PCs because the player annoyed him). It simply doesn't belong in any of my games.

Nothing should ever happen to a character because the player was annoying*. OOC problems should receive OOC solutions.



*unless you're playing Paranoia and it's supposed to be part of the dark humor

kivzirrum
2015-08-18, 01:54 PM
Nothing should ever happen to a character because the player was annoying*. OOC problems should receive OOC solutions.



*unless you're playing Paranoia and it's supposed to be part of the dark humor

I agree completely.

Frozen_Feet
2015-08-18, 02:19 PM
@WalkingTheShade: reading your post closely, we're not in disagreement about much. I will clarify the point of adjusting basics to the person, however. While I can see the appeal of making an art as open as possible, with limited instructors, you run into diminishing returns. At some point, trying to accommodate for that especially weak person will detract from the training of others. Martial arts actually have it easier here than tabletop RPGs, because an instructor can make the others do stuff on their level while he helps that one person more easily.

Here's also where the analogy becomes complicated. In martial arts, there is a goal of self-improvement. Ideally, the guy who broke his bones lifting that bag will become strong enough to not break them. Extrapolating this to RPGs would mean that ideally, the person who is uncomfortable dealing with a taboo subject in a game should become more comfortable with it. But this idea has met significant resistance on these boards even when attached to pure game conceits with no real-life issues underlying them. (See: Mage's disjunction, having your spellbook stolen.)

Now, to get back on track, I will give you a simple definition of "typical" as pertains to our discussion: two-thirds of people who have had bad experiences AND show up in a gaming session, will at most feel mild discomfort if something resembling their trauma comes up. The people who suffer severe anxiety in such a case are some subset of the one-third of this population who feel more than mild discomfort.

Importantly, mild discomfort is not something that would make a person quit a session completely. For an analogue, consider someone stepping on your toes during sparring.

I'm afraid we won't get far with this, though. To my knowledge, there is no study of the tabletop crowd which would go to sufficient detail.

Vercingex
2015-08-18, 04:54 PM
Here's also where the analogy becomes complicated. In martial arts, there is a goal of self-improvement. Ideally, the guy who broke his bones lifting that bag will become strong enough to not break them. Extrapolating this to RPGs would mean that ideally, the person who is uncomfortable dealing with a taboo subject in a game should become more comfortable with it. But this idea has met significant resistance on these boards even when attached to pure game conceits with no real-life issues underlying them. (See: Mage's disjunction, having your spellbook stolen.)


To this I have to ask- is trying to make rape a comfortable subject really a worthwhile aim for "self-improvement"? Rape is a real problem in our society, and not something I feel we should ever be comfortable with happening. And I think being uncomfortable with it in game isn't a sign of weakness, but sensitivity to a heinous crime.

I also have issue with the idea that people need to be exposed to unpleasant subject matter in their games. Tabletop RPG players are indulging in fantasy. There is a reason that most D&D games don't end with the party dying of the plague. It's not something that most players see as something they want to happen in their heroic fantasies.

That said, many people like dark fantasy worlds where hideous things happen to people, and that's fine, as long as the group agrees. But labeling a person who doesn't like dealing with uncomfortable material in their fun time as "weak" is unfair and unfounded.

Getting back to the topic at hand, there is only one context in which I feel "being comfortable" with the subject of rape is desirable- we need to make rape victims feel comfortable coming forward to discuss what's happened to them. But that probably isn't what happening when rape occurs in a tabletop RPG session.

To conclude, when the subject of rape comes up, it SHOULD provoke an emotional response,including discomfort, because it is a disgusting act that should never be okay. Ideally, we'd react the same way about murder, but the cultural boat's sailed on that one. And if the players are willing to deal with uncomfortable subjects at the gaming table, that is fine. But don't force people to face race in their games in an attempt to "strengthen" (read:"desensitize") them.

martixy
2015-08-18, 05:31 PM
~snip~

Good story. Me likey.
I think the DM did a good job.

Was the paladin one of those paladins ingame?

ThePrez1776
2015-08-18, 05:34 PM
Our campaign is set in a very dark, gritty, serious world, so it's a problem that does exist, but our DM uses it to a very limited extent. Mostly it's just a minor comment in the context of when we receive a report of some war and pillaging in a certain area, used to embellish the brutality of the opponents. The only time it's come up with our party is when we were captured by a group of enemy soldiers and the captain threatened to have one party member raped if we didn't give him information. However, we were able to get out of the situation fairly easily and kill a bunch of the soldiers, and I doubt the DM intended for the rape to ever realistically happen. I think that's really about the most I'd personally be comfortable with. Rape is a very damaging personal experience. I've played with players who were personally raped before, and suffered PTSD from it, which is an incredibly serious condition that shouldn't be aggravated for the sake of realism. At the end of the day, we all sit down at the table to enjoy ourselves and have a good time, and for myself and the people I play with, including rape in our games isn't worth it.

On the subject of sex in general, our DM has had NPC's become... involved, but it's always done offscreen. PC's never have sex because that just isn't really what we want in the game. We never really feel a need to seduce other characters, because that isn't what we want to get out of playing RPG's. The only exception is in a Victorian Science Fiction game in which one of our PC's is literally Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, and seducing women is a core aspect of his character. Still, the act is done entirely offscreen.

Vercingex
2015-08-18, 06:02 PM
Our campaign is set in a very dark, gritty, serious world, so it's a problem that does exist, but our DM uses it to a very limited extent. Mostly it's just a minor comment in the context of when we receive a report of some war and pillaging in a certain area, used to embellish the brutality of the opponents. The only time it's come up with our party is when we were captured by a group of enemy soldiers and the captain threatened to have one party member raped if we didn't give him information. However, we were able to get out of the situation fairly easily and kill a bunch of the soldiers, and I doubt the DM intended for the rape to ever realistically happen. I think that's really about the most I'd personally be comfortable with. Rape is a very damaging personal experience. I've played with players who were personally raped before, and suffered PTSD from it, which is an incredibly serious condition that shouldn't be aggravated for the sake of realism. At the end of the day, we all sit down at the table to enjoy ourselves and have a good time, and for myself and the people I play with, including rape in our games isn't worth it.

On the subject of sex in general, our DM has had NPC's become... involved, but it's always done offscreen. PC's never have sex because that just isn't really what we want in the game. We never really feel a need to seduce other characters, because that isn't what we want to get out of playing RPG's. The only exception is in a Victorian Science Fiction game in which one of our PC's is literally Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, and seducing women is a core aspect of his character. Still, the act is done entirely offscreen.

I would just like to suggest the following to all GMs out there- never ever EVER have a PC raped or tortured without their express permission, nor would I even recommend suggesting it to one of your PCs (ESPECIALLY IF THAT PLAYER IS FEMALE). That kind of disempowering horror is not fun or pleasant, and you should never spring that on someone playing a game for fun.

The only time any PC torture has happened in any games I've been in is when one of my PCs, who kept going on about how he wanted his character to lose an eye, was captured by some goblins instead of killed. We discussed it, and he felt it was appropriate for him to be tortured. Even that was pretty uncomfortable. And I never even suggested the other captured PC would be tortured.

We don't even joke about rape. Ever.

BootStrapTommy
2015-08-18, 07:14 PM
Of these two events, the torture of a few lone goblin prisoners (that might be constructed as sexual assault) was more disturbing for me, as a DM. That bugs me out. But did it bug you out because it is actually morally wrong in a greater degree? Or because you've been socialized to have it bug you out more?

What exactly about sexual violence makes us more uncomfortable than the systematic extermination of innocents? Why exactly do we conclude one to be a semi-comfortable exercise of fantasy, but not the other?

SaintRidley
2015-08-18, 07:22 PM
The closest I've ever had a game come to touching on this is the game I'm currently in. I'm playing alongside some new players who've never played before, to basically be an experienced player who can help keep things more or less on track. I'm a big fan of letting the new players have the run of things, because they've thus far had quite the imagination and have taken things in some very interesting directions.

One of the new players, though, she's very interesting. She's playing a ranger who seems especially fond of poisons and her own idea of justice. Last session we found out that there's an ogre messing with this tiny village. So she asked if there was a town rapist she could poison to feed to the ogre, or failing that any stillborn babies.

It's going to be a very interesting game, I'll say that much.

goto124
2015-08-18, 07:51 PM
Rape sounds like a senseless thing to me, to be honest. People do it because... they're terrible people? They want to show power? There're other ways to show those themes, that don't involve portraying a seriously horrible act of sexual violation.

Despite the viewpoints here, I can't think of situations where rape would really make sense. I can't imagine why someone would think that excluding rape is 'breaking versimiltude'. I think I'll go back and look at the examples, if I can manage it.

May I add the idea of technically consensual sex? That is, when technically sex could be refused, but they're many societal constrains in place, and saying 'no' is a false option. I won't provide examples here, since I'm not very knowlegable. Just hoping others could chip in.

What can one do with the theme of rape? The rapist is a villain beyond reproach and underserving of sympathy. The victim is... well, a victim. Okay, I can see some interesting themes here, like how the victim gets over hir troubles, and sexuality can come into play. It only requires alluding to rape, and most of the attention is on the recovery process. I'm rambling, I'm sure, I'm just wondering aloud what rape can contribute to the plot beyond 'this guy is evulz, kill him!'

Is it mollycoddling to ban rape?

Zale
2015-08-18, 07:51 PM
Rape is a very damaging personal experience. I've played with players who were personally raped before, and suffered PTSD from it, which is an incredibly serious condition that shouldn't be aggravated for the sake of realism.

This. This right here. Other people are more important than the consistency of an imaginary world.

Vercingex
2015-08-18, 09:13 PM
Is it mollycoddling to ban rape?

No. People need to be aware of rape; they do not need to wallow in depravities during RPG time. Isn't the purpose of roleplaying games to step out of our world for a while?

goto124
2015-08-18, 09:51 PM
My post is mostly 'how to use rape to add to plot and characterization meaningfully and sensibly'. If I'm dealing with rape, I'm dealing with issues of sexuality and power dynamics.



But if you are going to use it, I think you have to ask the questions
1) Why am I using rape to tell this story? and
2) Is there another way for me to tell the story I'm trying to tell, or is this actually the most effective way?

There's lots of ways to show, for example, that a situation is horrible. You have to be doing something specific to want to show rape. Rape is emblematic of a specifically sexual representation of power, and to use it is to say things about that power structure.

In a roleplaying game scenario, you also have to ask
3) Will my players see this the way I am telling it? and
4) Am I being respectful to my player's feelings and desires for the game we're playing together?

Anyone trying this, I believe, will make mistakes the first few times; so long as you are respectful to the severity of what you are showing, however, I believe it can be done.

For example, I would strongly suggest that you not have a character rape someone to show that they are capital E Evil. There are many ways to show this, and rape probably isn't even the best way to show this. Rape expresses something different than a lot of kinds of violence.


There's lots of sex in our games. Especially when it's just me and my girlfriend. We're just that kind of people.

Neat, a solo campaign between people who know each other very well. A great place to play out uncomfortable things. That's many issues resolved already.

Rape. I have no problem with it as long as it makes sense.
In one of my games a male PC raped a female warrior. She said that she could only be with a man that can defeat her (she was a quite powerful warrior). He defeated her with ease and claimed his reward on the spot.

I personally see little wrong with 'I lay only with those who can best me in combat', especially assumptions such as 'she can refuse sex even after defeat'. I see this event as showing how sex-and-power hungry the man is, to the point of rape.


I realised that we argued this at length in another thread. I'll try to keep this short.

It's not 'I must bed those who defeat me', it's 'I refuse to bed those who can't defeat me'. I believe that it's valid for a male to refuse to lay with any woman who can't best him in combat. He (or she) is perfectly alright with the defeated person refusing after the fight. The oath is 'I must not lay with anyone who hasn't proven their worth first.' It is, at worst, mildly stupid.

Then again, this thread isn't really the place to argue about that. I'm just explaining how I see no reason this 'defeat me to bed me' is so horrible.


The same character, currently an NPC, tends to rape attractive female enemies as punishment for trying to kill him. Many of those women are currently his loyal servants.

While the idea is interesting (a man so awful he thinks he must rape to show his sexual power over his enemies), I'm not sure why they're loyal to him now. If I had a similar villain, I'll put my own spin on it- have him rape unattractive people or other males, have him enslave his highly tramatised victims afterwards, show how messed up his victims now are, with some victims handling their situation better than others. Not that you have to, it's just personal preferences.

Again, I believe rape should be used to tied in with a theme, typically that of sex and power. Context matters, and the overarching theme should be dealed with outside the rape event itself.



So if I'm going to use rape in a game, it'll be a defining moment.

alternatively, if being used to define the villain, it will show not only how depraved the villain is, but also that they consider sex to be a primary means of displaying power.

(Hey, this is high fantasy, that's actually a fairly uncommon primary power display for most baddies simply because a lot of them have much more horrible things they can do.) I'll say the reasons tend toward 'I'm power-hungry but not in the sexual way' and 'Rape is far too horrible even by my standards'. But I get your point.

This not only provides some color for your villain (and increases the punch of the event since you aren't using it regularly), but also gives some insight into his priorities and methodology, which the players could use against him.

For example, the one time I actually had a rapist villain (again, it's not a regular occurrence for my table, largely because I at least like to pretend I'm more clever than that) one of my players pretended to be a helpless victim of the villain's preferred gender, and since the villain was also somewhat reckless in their lust, this let the rest of the party quite literally catch them with their pants down and gave the group a big advantage in the following battle.

That's a bit of an exceptional circumstance, I'll grant, but the point stands: It was useful as specific characterization, but I wouldn't have used it for a general "this guy's messed up" descriptor.

Enran
2015-08-18, 10:21 PM
I don't understand the point of including rape or even sex, honestly. Most of the RPGs I play are high-fantasy romps either through epic quests of heroism or dastardly deeds of villainy, not the sexual misadventures of otherwise fairly normal people. Even the bleakest worlds I would design would focus on the fantasy elements, usually, like how there are horrible aberrations and demons spewing through extradimensional portals or the corrupt government in mass Dominating everyone into happiness and servility, not that the corrupt guards have way too much power with no restrictions and can take advantage of girls without fear of retribution or something. And even if I wanted to establish that the guards were terrible and corrupt, I'd just have them shown mugging anybody who looks at them funny or willingly taking bribes to look the other way for wealthy criminals (or even help them commit crimes). Plus, a pretty good point was brought up that rape can suck the nuance out of some of the evil characters, because no matter how maturely you address the subject matter of rape, you never really want to be the DM sending the wrong message by giving any rapist villains redeeming qualities. Of course, that's actually justified somewhat, too; unlike most other evils, even crazy people could rarely spin a rape as a "necessary evil" on any level.

I mean, if you're a punch-clock villain or the like, you might be able to rationalize the genocide you just committed as "yeah, this is horrible, but I still have to feed my family," or "sure I feel bad about this, but the leaders said that if those guys kept living the whole kingdom could be destabilized and then we'd get conquered by the cruel guys over there!" Or even the well-intentioned extremist's "If there were any other way to stop the reality-ending abomination than sacrificing these thousand souls, I'd go for it in a heartbeat, but to the limit of my ability to find other options, it's looking like they'll have their souls destroyed whether by me or when all reality is ended, so I have to do this!" There are very few circumstances where the same can be applied to rape; you can't commit rape "for the Greater Good," I can't imagine any government that will pay you family-supporting money for a rape well done, and you can't even rape because "these people need to be eradicated for (real or imagined) reasons," you can really only rape because you're a sick bastard that likes forcing power over somebody else.

tl;dr: There is no villainous justification for rape except a Belkar-esque "you have to serve the Greater You" by taking power and sexual control from a victim, and that sharply limits the number of varied and interesting villains one would be able to come up with who utilize rape.

goto124
2015-08-18, 10:36 PM
I agree with the above post. It'll take some contrived situations to create a reason to rape.

Even in the case of 'Evil parasite threatens to kill person if he doesn't rape', it's expected that the person should've chosen death due to the nature of rape. We already saw that in this thread.

The best I can think of is 'woman is being used for a virgin sacrifice for a ritual that'll destroy the world, so a man decides to remove her virginity to break the ritual'. There're be need to explain why the virgin can't, or doesn't want to, consent to the sex. Usually, when virgin sacrifice comes up, the heros manage to save the virgin. In a tabletop RPG, there is normally little reason the virgin absolutely has to lose her virginity, and setting things up to justify it is likely to come off as 'why did you the DM set things up in such a terrible way anyway?!'

Again, corner cases.

HolyCouncilMagi
2015-08-18, 10:54 PM
I agree with the above post. It'll take some contrived situations to create a reason to rape.

Even in the case of 'Evil parasite threatens to kill person if he doesn't rape', it's expected that the person should've chosen death due to the nature of rape. We already saw that in this thread.

The best I can think of is 'woman is being used for a virgin sacrifice for a ritual that'll destroy the world, so a man decides to remove her virginity to break the ritual'. There're be need to explain why the virgin can't, or doesn't want to, consent to the sex. Usually, when virgin sacrifice comes up, the heros manage to save the virgin. In a tabletop RPG, there is normally little reason the virgin absolutely has to lose her virginity, and setting things up to justify it is likely to come off as 'why did you the DM set things up in such a terrible way anyway?!'

Again, corner cases.
I have to disagree on the "should've chosen death" thing, honestly. I would absolutely agree if you said that such a person couldn't be Good; that's my position as well. However, as bad as it is, I don't think it's too far south of Neutral to do it when you've got the equivalent of a masked man with a gun to your head, except worse. (I mean, jeez, the thing was inside him, it's not like he even had an opportunity to try and fight back.) Combined with his immediate movement to find the person he victimized and throw himself at their feet, I really wouldn't expect anything more from the average person. Again, I subscribe to the belief that you have to go far above and beyond what the average person would do to be Good, so I do think the Good character should accept death in that circumstance, but well, the DM didn't try to place the guy as Good, just non-Evil.

goto124
2015-08-19, 12:05 AM
I suppose the psychological trauma the infected man had gone through may be a point in his favor.

How do we answer questions of 'why does this situation happen in the first place'?

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-19, 03:51 AM
@WalkingTheShade: reading your post closely, we're not in disagreement about much. I will clarify the point of adjusting basics to the person, however. While I can see the appeal of making an art as open as possible, with limited instructors, you run into diminishing returns. At some point, trying to accommodate for that especially weak person will detract from the training of others. Martial arts actually have it easier here than tabletop RPGs, because an instructor can make the others do stuff on their level while he helps that one person more easily.
Well yes, there is a limit below which you can't go. Some people show clearly no potential, and you gently redirect them to some other activity. However most of your "typical" persons have potential; also, most of those "typical" persons have issues to overcome. One of the most common is aversion to violence, which most of the women and a higher number of men you'd think take a long time to overcome, if they ever manage to do it.


I'm afraid we won't get far with this, though. To my knowledge, there is no study of the tabletop crowd which would go to sufficient detail.
That's the point I was getting to, but you anticipated it. In the absence of statistics, an ad hoc poll and discussion on a web forum might be the only tool to get information from beyond our own experiences.


On the subject of sex in general, our DM has had NPC's become... involved, but it's always done offscreen. PC's never have sex because that just isn't really what we want in the game. We never really feel a need to seduce other characters, because that isn't what we want to get out of playing RPG's. The only exception is in a Victorian Science Fiction game in which one of our PC's is literally Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, and seducing women is a core aspect of his character. Still, the act is done entirely offscreen.
The starting age for D&D 3.5 characters is mid-teens to early adulthood. Sex, romance and relationships in general are an important psychological aspect at that age. The Bard in my ongoing campaign was forever trying to seduce every female he meets. The character tended to be irresponsible regarding the consequences, but now has gotten better at it.
The fact that the Druid is socially inept, dirty and reeks of dire rat has come up many times in conjunction with his inability to relate to women. It has also helped move the character in a very different direction.
Various characters have visited brothels on occasion.
The Knight, who was more interested in knightly things than the opposite sex, is starting to feel lonely now that the party is not on the road anymore. He has started to romance with a cute barmaid.
None of these details are a core aspect to a each character. But they're still part of the character's development.


But did it bug you out because it is actually morally wrong in a greater degree? Or because you've been socialized to have it bug you out more?
Second option. And that bugs me even more.


What exactly about sexual violence makes us more uncomfortable than the systematic extermination of innocents? Why exactly do we conclude one to be a semi-comfortable exercise of fantasy, but not the other?
Part of it is cultural. Many kinds of violence I've been exposed to as kid I've grown desensitized. However, TV is just recently starting to air rape scenes at prime time.
Another part of it is empathy: torture and rape are a lot harder not to take personally.
A last part of the equation is the cultural taboo in general. I believe it creates more harm than good, by discouraging any systematical understanding of the causes and general social context. In many places, discussing the causes of rape gets you labelled as someone who sympathizes with rapists.


Rape sounds like a senseless thing to me, to be honest. People do it because... they're terrible people? They want to show power? There're other ways to show those themes, that don't involve portraying a seriously horrible act of sexual violation.
Power, either over one person, or over a group. It's making a show that the victims belong to the rapists in their deepest intimity.


May I add the idea of technically consensual sex? That is, when technically sex could be refused, but they're many societal constrains in place, and saying 'no' is a false option. I won't provide examples here, since I'm not very knowlegable. Just hoping others could chip in.
This happens in couples and marriages all the time. Depending on the time and cultural context, it may be viewed as marital rape.


What can one do with the theme of rape? The rapist is a villain beyond reproach and underserving of sympathy. The victim is... well, a victim. Okay, I can see some interesting themes here, like how the victim gets over hir troubles, and sexuality can come into play. It only requires alluding to rape, and most of the attention is on the recovery process. I'm rambling, I'm sure, I'm just wondering aloud what rape can contribute to the plot beyond 'this guy is evulz, kill him!'
Your ramblings make sense.


Is it mollycoddling to ban rape?
I don't believe in absolutes. Whatever floats your boat, as long as no one gets hurt.


No. People need to be aware of rape; they do not need to wallow in depravities during RPG time. Isn't the purpose of roleplaying games to step out of our world for a while?
Depends who you ask: some people prefer games that relate to the world they live in over games that are pure escapism. See earlier in the thread for longer developments on the subject.


tl;dr: There is no villainous justification for rape except a Belkar-esque "you have to serve the Greater You" by taking power and sexual control from a victim, and that sharply limits the number of varied and interesting villains one would be able to come up with who utilize rape.
There have been, historically, many kinds of justifications for it.
There are, currently, groups of people who rape and enslave, on a day-to-day basis, and have a theory to justify it.


I agree with the above post. It'll take some contrived situations to create a reason to rape.
You realize that it happens daily in our world, in a wide variety of nuanced situations?

goto124
2015-08-19, 04:19 AM
Only a Sith deals with absolutes. Are we going into Reality is Unrealistic (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnrealistic) terrority there?

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-19, 05:12 AM
Only a Sith deals with absolutes. Are we going into Reality is Unrealistic (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnrealistic) terrority there?
I don't follow. Can you develop?

Broken Twin
2015-08-19, 10:13 AM
In my current group, we've got a veteran with PTSD, a person with severe anxiety, a couple others, and my own issues, which I'm not getting into detail about. An episode occurring during a game happens very rarely, but when it does, we pause the game until it passes. We each experience them differently, and the triggers aren't always consistent. I know at least some of us have used the game as an avenue for exploring our conditions, but sometimes things aren't as easy to handle as you expect them to be.

I don't think rape is a special kind of evil. It's a bad one, but I'd be iffy putting it above things like torture. We've just been a lot more culturally desensitized to the latter than the former.


I would just like to suggest the following to all GMs out there- never ever EVER have a PC raped or tortured without their express permission, nor would I even recommend suggesting it to one of your PCs (ESPECIALLY IF THAT PLAYER IS FEMALE). That kind of disempowering horror is not fun or pleasant, and you should never spring that on someone playing a game for fun.

While I generally agree with your post here, I disagree with your bolded part. Women are not special snowflakes that need extra protection, and men can get just as messed up by trauma as women. I know that's probably not what you intended to mean, but it's a sore issue for me. I know the oft quoted statistics, but I really don't want to get into real life talk here, as I'm pretty sure it would completely derail the thread.

I just want to say: I treat my group equally regardless of gender, and they do the same to me.

BootStrapTommy
2015-08-19, 10:30 AM
I don't think rape is a special kind of evil. It's a bad one, but I'd be iffy putting it above things like torture. Given rape is often used as torture, this statement might be dubious. It can be a torture, and a one of the most heinous to boot.

That being said I think we can all agree that genocide might qualify as things we could justifiably put above rape if we really thought it necessary to build a gradient of Evils. And as you said, we seem pretty desensitized to it...


While I generally agree with your post here, I disagree with your bolded part. Women are not special snowflakes that need extra protection, and men can get just as messed up by trauma as women. I know that's probably not what you intended to mean, but it's a sore issue for me. I know the oft quoted statistics, but I really don't want to get into real life talk here, as I'm pretty sure it would completely derail the thread. Thoughtful, respectful discussion of rape should always avoid defining it along terms of sex or gender. That should be a general courtesy thing, and you are right to take issue with it.

Hawkstar
2015-08-19, 10:56 AM
Plus, a pretty good point was brought up that rape can suck the nuance out of some of the evil characters, because no matter how maturely you address the subject matter of rape, you never really want to be the DM sending the wrong message by giving any rapist villains redeeming qualities. Because how dare a person, even one who has committed awful deeds, be portrayed and treated as a person.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-19, 11:18 AM
In my current group, we've got a veteran with PTSD, a person with severe anxiety, a couple others, and my own issues, which I'm not getting into detail about. An episode occurring during a game happens very rarely, but when it does, we pause the game until it passes. We each experience them differently, and the triggers aren't always consistent. I know at least some of us have used the game as an avenue for exploring our conditions, but sometimes things aren't as easy to handle as you expect them to be.
First of all, thanks a lot for sharing.
Then, I think it's awesome that people can use RPGs in such a way. Even while I believe RPGs in general have helped me develop many skills and have made me smarter, even while being able to use games such a way is something that I could imagine, I know no one who actually ever mentioned doing it.


Given rape is often used as torture, this statement might be dubious. It can be a torture, and a one of the most heinous to boot.
I think the underlying issue here has also to do with the limits of discussing notions such as "rape" or "torture" outside of any context.


Thoughtful, respectful discussion of rape should always avoid defining it along terms of sex or gender. That should be a general courtesy thing, and you are right to take issue with it.
Yet, if we put things in context, and without recourse to statistics, we live in a society that is still patriarchal. My opinion is that this entails different cultural constructions and justifications across the gender divide. (One example: I've yet to hear about a male victim that "he deserved or caused it because he acted or dressed like a slut/stupidly/promiscuously".)
This doesn't mean ignoring or belittling what happens to men comparatively to women. It means understanding that gender of the victim is an important (if not central) part of the context of the act.
I'm conscious I might be pushing my own thread off the rails with such a statement, please don't restrain yourselves if you want to answer to it.

MrConsideration
2015-08-19, 11:34 AM
A player at your table may be a survivor of rape. Statistically, it is far from unlikely. It would not be an enjoyable aspect of the game to be triggered or upset. You are unlikely to play with someone who has been murdered, and violence in the D&D sense is something a lot of people can justify - by and large, you murder horrible monsters that eat people. There is no 'good' rape, or justifiable rape. It is a disgusting act and incredibly damaging to the victims, and unfortunately is massively under-reported in most countries.

In my games, rape happens off-screen, maybe, and is never really brought up - maybe the ravaging Orcs have 'plundered and raped' a town or something. If a PC wanted to rape someone they can find a new table pronto.

Broken Twin
2015-08-19, 11:41 AM
Yet, if we put things in context, and without recourse to statistics, we live in a society that is still patriarchal. My opinion is that this entails different cultural constructions and justifications across the gender divide. (One example: I've yet to hear about a male victim that "he deserved or caused it because he acted or dressed like a slut/stupidly/promiscuously".)
This doesn't mean ignoring or belittling what happens to men comparatively to women. It means understanding that gender of the victim is an important (if not central) part of the context of the act.
I'm conscious I might be pushing my own thread off the rails with such a statement, please don't restrain yourselves if you want to answer to it.

Men's accusations are different. We get told we're lucky it happened if it was a woman that did it, that we obviously wanted it because we didn't stop it, or that we aren't real men because we let it happen. If anybody acknowledges it as anything other than a joke. And those come from both men and women. Men being sexually violated is treated as a joke in popular culture (don't drop the soap, the majority of romantic comedies, most of the cast of The View laughing over a man getting genitally mutilated...).

So yeah, the cultural restrictions are different. And like ever other variable, it should be taken into consideration. But that doesn't necessarily mean one group automatically has it worse than another. Men have advantages in some areas, women have advantages in other areas. I'm not interested in tallying them up to see who has it worst, just fixing the injustices I can as I encounter them.

Vercingex
2015-08-19, 12:28 PM
Men's accusations are different. We get told we're lucky it happened if it was a woman that did it, that we obviously wanted it because we didn't stop it, or that we aren't real men because we let it happen. If anybody acknowledges it as anything other than a joke. And those come from both men and women. Men being sexually violated is treated as a joke in popular culture (don't drop the soap, the majority of romantic comedies, most of the cast of The View laughing over a man getting genitally mutilated...).

So yeah, the cultural restrictions are different. And like ever other variable, it should be taken into consideration. But that doesn't necessarily mean one group automatically has it worse than another. Men have advantages in some areas, women have advantages in other areas. I'm not interested in tallying them up to see who has it worst, just fixing the injustices I can as I encounter them.

I follow your intentions. Yes, depictions of male rape in media tend to be played for humor when they shouldn't be. But that is really a distraction from the main issue- women in the US are FAR more likely to be the victims of rape than men. That makes rape an issue that more directly affects women, and discussing rape as a women's issue isn't an attempt to minimize the suffering of male victims, or to ignore cultural double standards- it's a reflection of statistics. And while I am sure that wasn't your intention, trying to muddy that fact for the sake of inclusiveness is highly disingenuous. Nobody likes inviting the "Well, it happens to men too, so what's you're problem?" crowd to the discussion.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-19, 12:29 PM
Men's accusations are different. We get told we're lucky it happened if it was a woman that did it, that we obviously wanted it because we didn't stop it, or that we aren't real men because we let it happen. If anybody acknowledges it as anything other than a joke. And those come from both men and women. Men being sexually violated is treated as a joke in popular culture (don't drop the soap, the majority of romantic comedies, most of the cast of The View laughing over a man getting genitally mutilated...).
This can still be attributed to patriarchy: a man is constructed as dominant in sexual encounters. If one is a man, one cannot be a victim. If one is a victim, then one cannot be a man. Since it is seemingly absurd to be both a man and a victim, the only context it can be discussed in is an absurd one, thus as a joke.


So yeah, the cultural restrictions are different. And like ever other variable, it should be taken into consideration. But that doesn't necessarily mean one group automatically has it worse than another. Men have advantages in some areas, women have advantages in other areas. I'm not interested in tallying them up to see who has it worst, just fixing the injustices I can as I encounter them.
Then, we completely agree.

Hawkstar
2015-08-19, 12:37 PM
I follow your intentions. Yes, depictions of male rape in media tend to be played for humor when they shouldn't be. But that is really a distraction from the main issue- women in the US are FAR more likely to be the victims of rape than men. That makes rape an issue that more directly affects women, and discussing rape as a women's issue isn't an attempt to minimize the suffering of male victims, or to ignore cultural double standards- it's a reflection of statistics. And while I am sure that wasn't your intention, trying to muddy that fact for the sake of inclusiveness is highly disingenuous. Nobody likes inviting the "Well, it happens to men too, so what's you're problem?" crowd to the discussion.

It's a way of dismissing/ignoring what's actually going on. When it comes to trauma and personal experience, people don't distribute it across categorizations they can be grouped into - a male doesn't feel 70% less pain/trauma from rape just because he's 70% less likely to be a victim of it.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-19, 12:39 PM
Nobody likes inviting the "Well, it happens to men too, so what's you're problem?" crowd to the discussion.
I do. As long as it is a discussion, we're not going to ignore an opinion exists just because we don't like to hear it.

Moreover, from the point of view of a victim, statistics are pretty irrelevant when faced with your own experience. EDIT: Hawkstar just expressed this point a lot better than me.

Last but not least, some feminists argue that social and cultural constructions relating to rape of female victims are far too overwhelming, some going as far as claiming they're half the problem for a female rape survivor.
I believe they mirror the social and cultural constructions relating to male victims and are as bad to some individual victims of both genders.

The train is far off-tracks, now...

Vercingex
2015-08-19, 12:41 PM
It's a way of dismissing/ignoring what's actually going on. When it comes to trauma and personal experience, people don't distribute it across categorizations they can be grouped into - a male doesn't feel 70% less pain/trauma from rape just because he's 70% less likely to be a victim of it.

Absolutely true. But are we talking about rape on the personal or societal level. Rape is always an intense personal trauma, regardless of who the victim is. But if we're talking about rape as a social problem, then it is something that overwhelmingly affects women.

Vercingex
2015-08-19, 12:44 PM
The train is far off-tracks, now...

True. I apologize for contributing to the derailment of this thread. But rape is a relevant social concern, and it's hard to discuss it without strong emotions coming out.

Which is one more reason why you should be careful about introducing it in your games. Tread carefully!

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-19, 12:49 PM
True. I apologize for contributing to the derailment of this thread. But rape is a relevant social concern, and it's hard to discuss it without strong emotions coming out.

Which is one more reason why you should be careful about introducing it in your games. Tread carefully!

No need to apologize. I'm fine with making detours as long as there's hope to make them useful for the rest of the trip.
The current situation is that we're moving past discussing "rape" (and sexuality) as generic invariant concepts and are injecting some context around it. That makes a lot of sense to me. And that's usually when people have difficulties staying emotionally distant from the subject.

Vercingex
2015-08-19, 12:53 PM
No need to apologize. I'm fine with making detours as long as there's hope to make them useful for the rest of the trip.
The current situation is that we're moving past discussing "rape" (and sexuality) as generic invariant concepts and are injecting some context around it. That makes a lot of sense to me. And that's usually when people have difficulties staying emotionally distant from the subject.

The trouble is, I feel context is inseparable from the issue. Everyone at the gaming table is showing up with strong emotions about the subject, and asking people to set those emotions aside and discuss the situation rationally may be asking too much.

WalkingTheShade
2015-08-19, 01:00 PM
The trouble is, I feel context is inseparable from the issue. Everyone at the gaming table is showing up with strong emotions about the subject, and asking people to set those emotions aside and discuss the situation rationally may be asking too much.
A response to this has come up a few times already: treating the subject needs to be done between players and GM who know each other well enough to assess toghether if this is indeed "asking too much" relative to their game and their table. Some might decide in one way, others in the other. For the majority, it's less evident than with other themes such as assault, murder, genocide, torture, etc.

Sacrieur
2015-08-19, 02:00 PM
I don't shy away from the brutal sex crimes.

It would be immersion breaking otherwise. Some NPCs are scumbags, deal with it. If you can't then you're free to go play a MLP roleplay and pretend that everything everywhere is sunshine and rainbows. It happens in the real world and thus it happens in my world. I try to make my character real, not just fake cutouts that aren't just some puppet for the PCs to kill. Sex crimes, addiction, and slavery are all very powerful things that go on and I do like tugging on my player's emotions.

Obviously it's not erotica, but there are sex elements and I will describe them as a matter of fact.

Hawkstar
2015-08-19, 02:08 PM
If I have sexuality in my games, brutal sex crimes come in as well. Heck, the power dynamics and motivation are of keen interest to me, and I've actually played somewhat rapey characters. Usually, though I don't have sexuality in my games. Most people aren't comfortable with it.

Of course, one of the things about rape is that, in a lot of cases, it isn't treated on par with Genocide (Certainly not such in the real world). Even seeming paragons of morality can get away with it. For some people, it's a highly traumatic experience on its own. For others, it is unpleasant, but the helplessness magnifies it into trauma. And a few of us are like "Well... that was a thing that happened," followed by an awkward brain-crash (Best term I can think to describe it. The end result is an overwhelming "meh"... that lasts for hours, sometimes.) Especially given all the different types of rape.

Ninja Bear
2015-08-19, 02:11 PM
True. I apologize for contributing to the derailment of this thread. But rape is a relevant social concern, and it's hard to discuss it without strong emotions coming out.

Which is one more reason why you should be careful about introducing it in your games. Tread carefully!

It cuts the other way too, of course. I only recall one player ever making rape jokes (or bringing the topic up at all) at a table I was at, and that player was also the only molestation victim I've knowingly played with. We figured it helped them deal with it, in their own way.

Being too quick to cut your players off isn't always the right thing to do, either.

Vercingex
2015-08-19, 02:32 PM
It cuts the other way too, of course. I only recall one player ever making rape jokes (or bringing the topic up at all) at a table I was at, and that player was also the only molestation victim I've knowingly played with. We figured it helped them deal with it, in their own way.

Being too quick to cut your players off isn't always the right thing to do, either.

If your players are comfortable with rape at the table, and you want rape to be part of your game, that is fine. But know that your players are comfortable with it beforehand. If you're not including content that makes your players uncomfortable, you're not cutting them off- you're respecting their boundaries.

BootStrapTommy
2015-08-19, 04:44 PM
I follow your intentions. Yes, depictions of male rape in media tend to be played for humor when they shouldn't be. But that is really a distraction from the main issue- women in the US are FAR more likely to be the victims of rape than men. That makes rape an issue that more directly affects women, and discussing rape as a women's issue isn't an attempt to minimize the suffering of male victims, or to ignore cultural double standards- it's a reflection of statistics. And while I am sure that wasn't your intention, trying to muddy that fact for the sake of inclusiveness is highly disingenuous. Nobody likes inviting the "Well, it happens to men too, so what's you're problem?" crowd to the discussion. Until 2010, the FBI, the primary keeper of statistics on rape in the US, legally defined rape solely in terms of female victimology. The current definition defines rape in terms of penetration. Furthermore prison related statistics are not included (they are separately tracked).

That fact might shade the statistics in ways that might not correspond to reality (exacerbated by the cultural elements that contribute to underreporting and underprosecution).

For the record, it is undeniable that I was raped. But the FBI's definitions disagree. According to them, I fall in the same class of victims as a girl who got her butt touched by a handsy douche. All because my rapist didn't have a penis.

If you ask a Dane if they're happy, statistically they are more likely than most to tell you they are. Not because they are, but because it would be considered a social faux pas in Denmark to admit otherwise. Statistics lie all the time.


If your players are comfortable with rape at the table, and you want rape to be part of your game, that is fine. But know that your players are comfortable with it beforehand. If you're not including content that makes your players uncomfortable, you're not cutting them off- you're respecting their boundaries. This. Basically this is the answer to OP's question.

Rape is a touchy subject. And like all touchy subjects in the world of RPing (like murderhoboing or alignment) it is a story element which is best broached only when it contributes to the narrative and the enjoyment of the players after thorough OoC discussion (that just sounds horrible doesn't it?). If it detracts from the fun of the group, it has no place at the table.

Kami2awa
2015-08-19, 05:14 PM
Something that I've used every time this has come up, as a PC or GM;

FADE TO BLACK

Whenever things get to the point where others would find them disturbing, or I would find them disturbing, just use that. Some things are best left to the imagination.

Then continue with the game.

goto124
2015-08-19, 07:21 PM
To get back on topic:

'best broached only when it contributes to the narrative and the enjoyment of the players after thorough OoC discussion '

This I'll agree with.

For it to contribute to the narrative, we'll have to look at the circumstances that lead up to it. But what would those circumstances be?

S@tanicoaldo
2015-08-19, 07:48 PM
I never see the point of having sex in a tabletop game. The idea sounds silly for me... Maybe in some vampire games but I never played them.

Rape on the other hand, it happened once... It was a evil camping and one of the players had as his backstory motivation a rape experience done by a mad scientist lord.

It was funny to see how even all those evil characters saw this evil lord with disgust. EvenEvilHasStandards (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvenEvilHasStandards)

BootStrapTommy
2015-08-19, 08:10 PM
This I'll agree with.

For it to contribute to the narrative, we'll have to look at the circumstances that lead up to it. But what would those circumstances be? For the first part, it contributes to the story under circumstances where it is either informative of power structures, informative of a character's nature, a natural progression of character, or serves as a genesis of conflict (since conflict fuels stories).

The second part is simpler. The DM and players just have to agree that that kind of content won't bother them or detract from their enjoyment of the game.

Vercingex
2015-08-19, 09:10 PM
For the first part, it contributes to the story under circumstances where it is either informative of power structures, informative of a character's nature, a natural progression of character, or serves as a genesis of conflict (since conflict fuels stories).

The second part is simpler. The DM and players just have to agree that that kind of content won't bother them or detract from their enjoyment of the game.

Well said.

Urist Mcmage
2015-08-23, 07:57 PM
In my opinion, that kind of stuff should be something that is only done in the background and as a major plot device. (although i would hesitate to use it unless everyone was very mature about that kind of stuff.) For example, I once GMed a one-shot SVU style adventure for dark heresy where the players where all adeptus arbites tracking down and dispensing the emperors justice on a slaaneshi pedophile ring. What I take issue with is when rape is used in a unecessary manner. For example, in a session of D&D, a fellow player raped a kobold and then tried to justify it by saying that "my character is female, and the kobold is male, that does not count as rape" and the only thing the DM did in response was to say that his character got Kobold AIDS and that he needed to drink a a healing potion in order to cure it. That is exactly how rape should not be handled, and the DM's response to this was immature and should have been much more harsh.

goto124
2015-08-23, 08:02 PM
"my character is female, and the kobold is male, that does not count as rape"

Did he/she actually say that out loud word for word? (As a side note, why this attitude exists: it's assumed that males are always eager, thus he would never not want sex from a female even if she didn't ask. In addition, females are though of as being weaker than males, thus a female cannot hurt a male ever, and if she somehow manages to, it means the male is really weak and deserved what he got. See the sexist attitudes?)

If your players demostrate such poor understanding of sexuality, yes you should not introduce rape into the game. The whole maturity thing is important.

BootStrapTommy
2015-08-23, 08:44 PM
^ This. Definitely this.

Vercingex
2015-08-24, 09:34 AM
"my character is female, and the kobold is male, that does not count as rape"

Did he/she actually say that out loud word for word? (As a side note, why this attitude exists: it's assumed that males are always eager, thus he would never not want sex from a female even if she didn't ask. In addition, females are though of as being weaker than males, thus a female cannot hurt a male ever, and if she somehow manages to, it means the male is really weak and deserved what he got. See the sexist attitudes?)

If your players demostrate such poor understanding of sexuality, yes you should not introduce rape into the game. The whole maturity thing is important.

Goto124 brings up an important corollary issue. We've been discussing whether a GM should introduce sex and rape into games; what about when a player is the one introducing the content, especially if it's making other people uncomfortable?

goto124
2015-08-24, 09:49 AM
what about when a player is the one introducing the content, especially if it's making other people uncomfortable?

Simple. Stop right there and then. Ask everyone else if they want to continue with this. Actually, in many situations where a player is introducing the content, the player is already being a immature jerk. Then more drastic action (such as kicking out) is probably in order.

If the mature player has legit reasons to introduce the content, the procedure is similar: ask the other people first, players and DM(s) alike.

Molan
2015-08-24, 10:07 AM
I think the core of this issue is a simple one:

- Sexual Violence is an extremely emotional subject for many, if not most people and therefore reactions are going to be strong. Applying logic to an emotional situation is in fact illogical because you're not actually trying to find a moral barometer -- you're simply dealing with how people FEEL.

In the GoT example, you have a pretty good example of this. I personally feel that the constant sexual violence in GoT and ASoIaF is not only consistent with the time period the writers/author were trying to emulate, but did a good job making the perpetrators as evil and dis-likable as possible. I did not, for example, think or feel in any way that these repeated acts were desensitizing ANYONE to the concept of sexual violence, but instead showed just how ugly SV could be, not to mention doing a pretty good job colorfully smashing the "fairytale" vision many people have of the Middle Ages.

But, that was my reaction. As many of us know, there were quite a few people who felt exactly the opposite. And the key here is how they FELT. It's actually more or less irrelevant whether or not they were right or wrong, their reactions (as mine) were emotional.

So, you get to rape in your fantasy setting. In darker settings (like ANY setting where Slaanesh is present, lol), you're going to have the Realists saying, "Look, these are some of the worst people imaginable. They will be involved in slavery, and human trafficking, and they will be involved in sexual violence because that's realistic. If you don't like it, go stab them to death."

And that would be all well and fine....as long as every player around the tabletop agreed with that sentiment on an emotional level.

Conversely, you the DM or any number of your players may decide that they're not emotionally happy with having SV in the game, at all, period, no matter how much practical sense it makes. One or more members of the group may be frustrated because taking out "realistic" SV may, in their eyes, "take the teeth" out of their villains somewhat. But as the DM, that's not your problem and it's not the problem of the other people around your Tabletop. There's a social contract in this game, a very simple one -- everyone has fun. That's the whole point. SV is very emotional, and while it might make a great motivator to put a lance through a particularly villainous enemy's crotch, if it's emotionally upsetting enough for anyone at the TT to stop having fun, you're better off just dropping it.

After all, your villains have plenty other evil stuff they can do to people. Get creative!

(P.S. I should admit in writing this that I have actually had human Trafficking and Sexual Violence present in games I've run. It's NOT because I support either activity -- indeed, I find it extraordinarily vile, as I felt that the NPCs conducting these activities were especially vile. It was there because it made sense for the setting and because it gave the PCs a chance to react to it. On my TT, this was accepted by the group at large. I would actually point out that the PCs who got riled up the most by these beasts were all male, and our one FEMALE player (who was RPing a very crooked swashbuckler/rogue) actually wound up selling a group of women to a brothel for a quick buck. Bottom line -- know your Group.)

Nifft
2015-08-24, 02:12 PM
Simple. Stop right there and then. Ask everyone else if they want to continue with this. Actually, in many situations where a player is introducing the content, the player is already being a immature jerk. Then more drastic action (such as kicking out) is probably in order.

If the mature player has legit reasons to introduce the content, the procedure is similar: ask the other people first, players and DM(s) alike.

Yeah, absolutely this.

If one player is using ANYTHING in the game to bully another player -- or make another player uncomfortable -- that's not okay.

Sexual violence is certainly one of those things, but other stuff like beating up or abusing an NPC for being fat (or whatever) might also constitute deliberately using the game to pick on another player.

That's not okay.

BootStrapTommy
2015-08-24, 04:59 PM
- Sexual Violence is an extremely emotional subject for many, if not most people and therefore reactions are going to be strong. Applying logic to an emotional situation is in fact illogical because you're not actually trying to find a moral barometer -- you're simply dealing with how people FEEL.
The logical issue of this was brought up for a simple reason. It is pretty sick that we can stomach genocide, but not sexual violence. It is something of a social barometer of note, and one that really shouldn't be the case.

If one argues that sexual violence content in the story should be met with discomfort, that argument goes a hundred fold for genocide. But thus is not the case, a fact which is frightening and very telling of violence's place in our culture.

Vercingex
2015-08-24, 05:50 PM
The logical issue of this was brought up for a simple reason. It is pretty sick that we can stomach genocide, but not sexual violence. It is something of a social barometer of note, and one that really shouldn't be the case.

If one argues that sexual violence content in the story should be met with discomfort, that argument goes a hundred fold for genocide. But thus is not the case, a fact which is frightening and very telling of violence's place in our culture.

It's not that people necessarily think genocide is better than rape. Genocide is an impersonal crime committed on such a scale that it's hard to conceptualize. Trying to wrap your head around so many deaths is impossible, therefore it's hard to feel any emotional connection. What emotional connection we do get is often through personal stories, especially survivors accounts because we can readily identify with individual trauma. In addition, I assume most people on this thread live in the "developed" world, where genocides happened far away or long enough ago to barely be within living memory, losing that personal connection. This is a problem when it comes to educating people on genocide.

Meanwhile, rape is a far more immediate crime in our societies. We hear plenty of survivors stories, with real emotional trauma. That is something that's immediate, and which resonates with people more than a list of statistics, even as we logically tell ourselves that the list represents a far more heinous act. Human nature is what it is.

BootStrapTommy
2015-08-24, 06:04 PM
It's not that people necessarily think genocide is better than rape. Genocide is an impersonal crime committed on such a scale that it's hard to conceptualize. Trying to wrap your head around so many deaths is impossible, therefore it's hard to feel any emotional connection. What emotional connection we do get is often through personal stories, especially survivors accounts because we can readily identify with individual trauma. In addition, I assume most people on this thread live in the "developed" world, where genocides happened far away or long enough ago to barely be within living memory, losing that personal connection. This is a problem when it comes to educating people on genocide.

Meanwhile, rape is a far more immediate crime in our societies. We hear plenty of survivors stories, with real emotional trauma. That is something that's immediate, and which resonates with people more than a list of statistics, even as we logically tell ourselves that the list represents a far more heinous act. Human nature is what it is. Astutely put.

Hawkstar
2015-08-24, 08:06 PM
The whole maturity thing is important.
No it's not. All that's important is everyone being on the same page (Which wasn't the case in the example). The most important thing is everyone has fun (Which didn't happen).

Vknight
2015-08-25, 09:13 PM
No it's not. All that's important is everyone being on the same page (Which wasn't the case in the example). The most important thing is everyone has fun (Which didn't happen).

yes which is important for the purposes of introducing sex.
I invited a player back to our group and told him expressly there would be talk of sex and the like. I informed them upfront the rest of the group was on-board with this and when it came up finally in a session he blew up at the players for no adequate reason.

They had knowledge and were consenting to there being minor depictions of sexual activity and when it actually happened they did not know what to do.

Here are my simple Do's and Don'ts

#1 : Sex needs to be established before the game or during making characters
#2 : If there is a no-sex clause don't push it
#3 : If the setting is established to be in a location like a strip club etc. Then players need to also establish what type of flavour text for the location upsets them
#4 : Rape is a special type of evil. Even the Joker finds rapists disgusting do you want to be considered vile by the Joker of all people?
#5 : Establish what is to far. Example-In a spy game I was in the ladies man used blackmail material to get with someone we needed information on. This was a case of realizing she could not convince the target to let him back to her mansion so he used the blackmail. So her character had coerced sex that the character did not want but had to perform for the purposes of the mission.
#6 : Crimes of this nature happen to both genders so if you for whatever reason are including it don't be sexist about it.
#7 : Avoid sex-based crimes as much as you can.
#8 : Do not take players agency away.
#9 : Remember sex can just be fading to black and that is the way most groups would prefer so keep in mind the group you are playing with
#10 : Yes sometimes the players will need information and the informant only wants to bang a PC. Give them an out. Always give them an out. Also again establish what is and is not ok

goto124
2015-08-25, 09:17 PM
#8 and #10... goodness. They're railroady and bad enough without sexual content.

Amphetryon
2015-08-25, 09:43 PM
#8 and #10... goodness. They're railroady and bad enough without sexual content.

Could you please clarify what you mean by "goodness. They're railroady and bad enough" in regards to "do not take away player agency"? I'm really having a hard time parsing if you meant your reply as agreement or rebuttal or something else.

Ninjaxenomorph
2015-08-25, 11:50 PM
I can chime in with my direct experiences. As for sex, my current group is made up of adults, and we have a pretty bawdy sense of humor. One player elected to play a working girl, and her introduction to the party was soliciting our (massively drunk) shaman. Nothing happened, though it was less on the part of their players and more the other players. After the game, we were going over some stuff on roleplaying, and the GM said that if she had approached a different character, things might have gone differently, using my frat-boy inspired warlord for an example. I said that not only would my character have accepted, but I also joked about wondering if he would use his breath weapon as he finished!

For the latter topic, I also have some experience. It was a Palladium Fantasy game with another group, and I rolled up a female dwarves cleric. I rolled ludicrously high on her Physical Beauty score (somewhere in the high 20s), and was. Had fun playing her as a well-meaning ditz (other scores were... not so good), who just wanted to spread her faith. Well, our GM had an unusual method of random monster encounters, asking a player for a number, then turning it into a page from the monster book. When the GM showed the players how gave him the number what was chosen, the player apologized to me in advance. He had inadvertently chosen satyrs. My character was quickly seduced with fey magic (she was a primary target), led into the bushes, the satyrs had a quick go, and they left her some magic wine for her trouble. Now, I obviously didn't like this, calling it out as magic date-rape, but the GM was just running the monster, something that even I agreed with. Our GM never delved into using rape, but we all agreed that what happened happened. It wasnt really made out to be more or less than what it was, but the GM made it just a hair more light than I would have liked.

ArcanaFire
2015-08-26, 04:47 AM
At our table, we fade to black with sexual encounters. We have a few reasons for this. Partly, it's because it can get awkward really fast. Partly, it's because it can get really boring with two characters just talking to each other for an extended period. Partly, it's because we sometimes have kids in our game (although we could just wait for them to go bed the first two points still stand).

Now that I've established this.

I wouldn't ever put my PCs in a situation they have no chance of getting themselves out of. The PCs should always have a chance. Always. You never throw a bad guy at them that they have no prayer of beating. No matter how bad the odds are, victory should still be possible.

If you get your arm cleaved off in the middle of a fight, you can keep fighting. You look like a total badass if you do.

Rape is a sexual act. Ergo it would fall under black screen. Except if we black screen a rape the character has no chance of fighting their way out of it. And if we do give them a chance to fight their way out that makes it graphic and uncomfortable for the whole table.

There are spells that can reattach and regrow limbs. You can heal from pretty much anything. Even death. The vile part of rape is the fact that it's psychological. It isn't about getting hurt, it's about power and having it taken away from you.

Given the fact that we black screen sexual acts, there is no way to have rape as a factor at our table without some measure of godmodding in play. So even if it didn't squick anyone out (and we do have a player for whom it is a very squicky subject) it still wouldn't be kosher.

I can't think of a single player for whom "now this happens and you get no saving throw" is okay.

Hawkstar
2015-08-26, 07:43 AM
For the latter topic, I also have some experience. It was a Palladium Fantasy game with another group, and I rolled up a female dwarves cleric. I rolled ludicrously high on her Physical Beauty score (somewhere in the high 20s), and was. Had fun playing her as a well-meaning ditz (other scores were... not so good), who just wanted to spread her faith. Well, our GM had an unusual method of random monster encounters, asking a player for a number, then turning it into a page from the monster book. When the GM showed the players how gave him the number what was chosen, the player apologized to me in advance. He had inadvertently chosen satyrs. My character was quickly seduced with fey magic (she was a primary target), led into the bushes, the satyrs had a quick go, and they left her some magic wine for her trouble. Now, I obviously didn't like this, calling it out as magic date-rape, but the GM was just running the monster, something that even I agreed with. Our GM never delved into using rape, but we all agreed that what happened happened. It wasnt really made out to be more or less than what it was, but the GM made it just a hair more light than I would have liked.Yeah... satyrs do add a twist to the whole rape issue, because for them, it is about pleasure and sex instead of power and control (Which they have little/no concept of. You can hate them for what they do to you, and they'd not be able to have any clue why)... and they're damn good as well, so that the victims of their lust end up emotionally and intellectullally distraught over an inability to reconcile the horror and trauma of "I have just had almost all of my power, agency, and freedom over my body taken away with nothing I could do about it" with the euphoria of "I've just had the best time of my life!"

Lorsa
2015-08-26, 09:09 AM
I tried to think of a less tacky title, but this one goes to the point.

I guess every DM has his limits of what he's OK to see in game, and mine is twofold.

I've always refused to describe any scene involving sex (between PCs, NPCs and PCs, etc.), either consensual or not, either dramatic or comedic... My reaction when such a situation occurs is "curtain down, some things happen off-screen, curtain comes back up with the morning sun". I give the lightest description I can, and that does frustrate some players who'd like to insert at least some limited role-play elements, without necessarily describing every detail.

The biggest problem I have is with rape.
Now, I never had a problem when other people DM and use it as an element (as long as they are mature about it, or the context is unambiguously absurd).
Neither do I have a problem with graphic torture scenes, that could IC have at least as much consequences on a character, and could be reacted to as badly OOC by players.
Last, I don't have an issue with rape used for backstory.
However, I go out of my way to avoid it's presence in game.

During my 15+ years career as a DM, I often went out of my way to avoid these situations, as they take me out of my comfort zone.
It has been problematic in the past, but not overly so, but now I feel it entails some limits. Regarding consensual sex, how a character behaves (rough or gentle, timid or confident, caring or self-absorbed, deeply loving or manipulative) is part of that character's development and personality.
Concerning rape, I feel avoiding the subject can harm the verisimilitude in some situations: soldiers sacking a city, characters being captured by enemies, etc.

Now I'm not looking for excuses for turning every game into a storm of depravity or inflicting horrible torment on PCs. It's just that I have difficulties addressing these issues, even when they're not going to happen.

Anyone has gaming experiences he'd like to share? or advice?

A bit late to the party here (busy life it seems), but I wanted to add in a few things to the OP.

From what you said, it seems to me that you are asking for advice on how to include subjects that are uncomfortable for you. On some level, it looks like you want to include (although in a limited form) sex and rape. I will see if I can help you towards that point.

The largest issue here is with your own comfort zone. I am not sure if you have already answered this before, and it might require some deep introspection, but why do you feel uncomfortable with these subjects? Is it only when playing RPGs, or do you generally avoid talking about them in general?

It seems to me that the first thing you need to do is to increase your comfort zone. I certainly agree with many here that rape is certainly a subject that should make people uncomfortable, but not to the extent where you pretend it doesn't exist.

In part, that is one of the things you need to remember. It is okay to include things in RPGs that make people uncomfortable (to some degree). Not all feelings when role-playing need to be happy-go-lucky. Many people look for safe mediums to experience negative emotions (such as watching horror movies). Also, sometimes driving an issue until it becomes uncomfortable can teach you something about yourself.

Anyway, if I were you, I would start with making myself more comfortable with sex in general. Talk about it with your friends. Go to wikipedia and learn about the physiological aspects. Research various common ways in which people perform sex. Watch movies about sex. Lastly, my best tip is really to engage in some good old-fashioned cyber-sex. The latter will really help your GMing if you want to add in some descriptions.

As I imagine reading the above paragraph made you more and more uncomfortable, another things you can do while all this goes on is to slowly start stretching your own boundaries while GMing. Including kissing, for example, is often less of an issue for people. Include sex that does not involve the players (let's say they accidentally run into a couple having intercourse at the wrong spot, or hear some sex-derived grunting when listening at a door in the Orc dungeon). That way you will slowly include the topic, even if you don't describe anything in detail, especially not when players are involved.

When it comes to rape, the subject should be uncomfortable. That's the whole reason you include it. My advice is that you try to remember that, and also try to distance yourself from it somewhat. Just because you are the one describing it, it doesn't mean you are performing it. Those are two very separate things. Just because you are describing an event in a world (as the GM), it does not mean you are the one doing it. As you mentioned, your job is to uphold verisimilitude, and sometimes that includes uncomfortable things.


As for myself, I usually include as much, or as detailed sex, as my players are comfortable with. Occasionally a little bit more, if they are of the type that likes to stretch their comfort zones while playing. I once had a player in Eclipse Phase who made "debauchery" as motivation, and composed a list of everyone the character had sex with. No, I still didn't go into detail on the sex acts, but I did describe them in terms of, say, "physical", "slow and sensual", "forceful" etc. It was my players choice to include the topic of sex as a relatively important part of the character's personality, which I believe is the way things should be (as in, it shouldn't come from the GM).

I have also included rape. Once I had a small adventure that involved a succubus that had set up a secret circle of men that had a competition of who could have sex with the most women in one month, consensual or not. She had set herself up as a prize, which motivated a few of the men to some really horrible deeds. The players were appropriately angered when they ran across this, and went out of their way to stop her (and had little sympathy for the men). Granted, some people have had real trauma involving rape, so you really need to know the history of your players if you are to do something like that.


Did any of this help? If I knew more of why it makes you uncomfortable, I could perhaps help more. Otherwise I believe the way to proceed is to slowly break your pattern of behavior and challenge your own inhibitions.

goto124
2015-08-26, 09:24 AM
"The players were appropriately angered when they ran across this, and went out of their way to stop her (and had little sympathy for the men)."

Should... should we stop the men or the succubus first?

Lorsa
2015-08-26, 09:51 AM
"The players were appropriately angered when they ran across this, and went out of their way to stop her (and had little sympathy for the men)."

Should... should we stop the men or the succubus first?

To be more precise, they first stopped the men they found, then interrogated them to learn about the succubus and how to find her, then went to a gathering a stopped both succubus and men at the same time. They had some thoughts that being manipulated by a demon might be grounds for some form of mercy for the men, but decided that they didn't really deserve any sympathy.

PersonMan
2015-08-26, 11:04 AM
Genocide is an impersonal crime committed on such a scale that it's hard to conceptualize. Trying to wrap your head around so many deaths is impossible, therefore it's hard to feel any emotional connection. What emotional connection we do get is often through personal stories, especially survivors accounts because we can readily identify with individual trauma. In addition, I assume most people on this thread live in the "developed" world, where genocides happened far away or long enough ago to barely be within living memory, losing that personal connection. This is a problem when it comes to educating people on genocide.

Plus, in my experience going to a location (especially one that has been restored/maintained in the state it used to be in at the time of the genocide) does provoke a deep emotional response. It's just that there's a difference between 'ten thousand people died' and 'In the room I am standing in, hundreds died screaming' - that's enough to make a huge difference. Similarly, rape in the form of 'they pillaged and raped 10 towns! We must stop them!' is different from an individual sexual assault.

Degrees of separation and all that.


Could you please clarify what you mean by "goodness. They're railroady and bad enough" in regards to "do not take away player agency"? I'm really having a hard time parsing if you meant your reply as agreement or rebuttal or something else.

Pretty sure she means 'these rules are very necessary, it's bad enough if they're broken in other contexts without even getting into sexual stuff'.


If you get your arm cleaved off in the middle of a fight, you can keep fighting. You look like a total badass if you do.

This ties into something I thought of when reading about the whole rape vs torture thing.

In a torture situation, there's still a chance for a character to show that they're a badass - you know, the whole 'we put him on the rack for 10 hours but he said nothing, even as he died' that tells you that they had incredible will. Even in a hellish situation like that, with no escape in sight, they stood firm (metaphorically speaking). You can't really do that with rape, to my knowledge. Even if it happens, and is immediately followed by the rapist being horribly murdered by the victim, it's still not the same. The feeling of 'they tried to break them but couldn't' isn't there.

Honest Tiefling
2015-08-26, 04:01 PM
I might be in the minority, but I wouldn't necessarily shy away from it. I haven't really thought about it, but I would say that unless I know for certain that my players would be cool with it...I will assume I don't know them well enough to introduce the topics AT ALL. I wouldn't even be comfortable with a player introducing that element in their backstory, even if it came with a more positive light (victim trying to overcome past trauma) unless I knew the players well.

Keep in mind, there's usually at least one woman in my groups, and sometimes they make up the majority of players. Maybe it is sexist to assume that women might have a slightly higher chance of not being okay with it? I dunno, but I sure as heck ain't taking the risk with people I don't always have the luxury of knowing. As I live in San Francisco, so I assume I also have a higher chance of transgendered in my groups, which is another issue.

And oddly enough, I think I would be more comfortable with it if there was a case of a single or only a few players doing it. I guess I find it easier to think of the PCs as becoming so utterly monstrous that this somehow became a reasonable course of action due to twisted logic if they were more likely to be cut off from other forms of support or easier for a smaller group under fire to go off the deep end. Because if players ever did it, it would be damn clear that their characters are monsters. No two ways about it.

I will admit, I...Kinda don't like using it as a motivation for NPCs in a general sense. Woman gets raped, menfolk rush to her rescue? That troupe has issues written all over it unless handled well. Goes too far into the territory that all plots involving women must somehow incorporate their hoo-ha and that rape is just a motivation for men to protect the weak women. I tend to steer away from that as I don't feel I am capable of handling it well and with enough nuance.

I would 100% make a rule that no one forces another player, regardless of other rules. Not going there. Not at all. Nope nope.

goto124
2015-08-26, 07:54 PM
I don't think that's what we meant by motivations.

EDIT: Also, this thread is necro'd. This post was posted last year in August!

Gurp
2016-06-26, 12:56 AM
Rather than being immature for a player or GM to introduce this, it seems immature not to if the player in question is a villain with a libido, without a code of honor that would forbid it, with the means to succeed at and get away with it (or the impulsiveness not to care) and either without access to equal tier consensual relief or if they have that, some kind of sadistic streak which would make that unsatisfactory.

Particularly for campaigns that go for gritty realistic personalities in villains it would be cartoonish to utterly avoid villain NPCs or villainous PCs attempting this stuff.

Mechanics aren't needed if it can be solved via existing ones like mind control or intimidation. It sojkd only be hard to game if actual combat rolls are needed.

If a.GM is worried about triggering/upsetting you can just avoid accompanying prose for the combat, something many people do for all combat anyway to speed it up. Standard vague terms like strike/parry/dodge/entangle/escape for grappling could be used.

In the end you could be dealing with thrusting/crushing attacks which do far less damage than a punch or choke and are inefficient ways of resolving combat which will earn more enemies than honorable combat and attract more heroes to defeat you.

Berenger
2016-06-26, 05:21 AM
@Gurp: I can understand why you think that the avoidance of a common subject at all costs and in all situations hurts the realism of the game world. But I can't understand how, after (presumably) reading this whole thread, you still fail to grasp that the depiction of sexual violence runs a high risk of seriously hurting your players in the real world. Acting "mature" implies a capacity to acknowledge and prioritize several goals. In leisure activities, the default assumption of most people is that a reasonable amount of safety for all the persons involved has a higher ranking priority than other goals (including the goal of creating the most real or gritty game world experience possible).

Your solution to "avoid triggering people" (by heavily implying things like "being thrusted", but then refusing to actually describe them in detail and leaving them to the imagination) is an actual writing technique to increase the amount of apprehension and horror felt by the audience. It's a pretty horrible way to accomplish your stated goal.

Socratov
2016-06-26, 07:57 AM
I have said this before in other threads and will keep saying it over and over again:

you play this game for your enjoyment, and in a group, so that means making sure everyone has fun.

What people consider fun should be priority #1 during session 0 (or the session before everything starts where you discuss what you can expect of each other and the houserules etc.)

Stuff like this (including racism and other real world sensitive topics) is a thing the complete group needs to have agree on. Unanimously. No group pressuring.

If you forgot about talking about that and it suddenly rears its head, that is a moment where you put everything on hold and figure out if everyone is on board with this.

If even there is only one person not ok with it or getting stressed by it, the game stops being fun. Which defeats the purpose and can beget a lot more problems.