nanoboy
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 142
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Post by nanoboy on Oct 30, 2013 8:03:59 GMT -8
Imagine a world in which a toxic substance is constantly released into the environment, and this substance drives young men to kill and cause all manner of violence. It permeates everywhere, but it is most concentrated in the cities, hiking crime rates and causing mayhem. The state takes many measures, imprisoning huge swaths of the population, and certain minorities are blamed for the devastation. This apocalyptic hellscape was a thing worldwide from about 1950 to 1990, and the toxic substance was lead. A lot of science has gone into figuring out how bad lead is for individuals and tracking environmental concentrations along with crime statistics, and it looks like the rise of lead products and the eventual banning of lead paint and anti-knock chemicals has reduced crime a great deal. Yes, you can clearly use this scenario in a game.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Oct 30, 2013 9:30:32 GMT -8
I just want to be sure that we are all still okay with wanton mass-murder of bad-guy races (I'm looking at you, Goblins), torture of npcs for information, and killing of prisoners to keep the tabletop bookkeeping to a minimum, or simply on a whim. All that's still cool, right?
PS: My avatar is startlingly accurate: I am a bald, grey headed, baby-looking creature.
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Post by Stu Venable on Oct 30, 2013 9:55:21 GMT -8
Yes. All of that is just fine!
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merryprankster
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 243
Favorite Species of Monkey: Howler
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Post by merryprankster on Oct 30, 2013 12:03:15 GMT -8
No way man, I see a new face for the modern adventurer. A kinder, gentler adventurer who dispatched his foes through happiness! It's a brave new world people and it's time for adventurers of all sorts to get on board! Also I think that Unicorn is a fine term for female gamers. Unicorns are beautiful and magical, just like female gamers.
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nanoboy
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 142
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Post by nanoboy on Oct 30, 2013 12:28:35 GMT -8
Also I think that Unicorn is a fine term for female gamers. Unicorns are beautiful and magical, just like female gamers. I dunno. I mean, I've seen the term used to described bisexual women willing to be the third for a heterosexual couple's threesome.
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merryprankster
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 243
Favorite Species of Monkey: Howler
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Post by merryprankster on Oct 30, 2013 12:52:57 GMT -8
Well if you have to sully it......
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fredrix
Master Douchebag
Posts: 2,142
Preferred Game Systems: Fate, L5R, Pendragon, Gumshoe, Feng Shui
Currently Playing: Pendragon, Song of Ice and Fire, L5R, Feng Shui, Traveller
Currently Running: Fate, Coriolis, Nights Black Agents
Favorite Species of Monkey: 1970's NTV, dubbed by the BBC (though The Water Margin beats it)
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Post by fredrix on Oct 30, 2013 22:58:16 GMT -8
Apropos of very little, I've been watching Buffy with my 12 yo daughter. Just saw The Body last night and on re -watching it holds up to be probably the best 45 minutes of TV EVER.
I was thinking about the female characters there. All "strong" not in the sense of kick-assery but well rounded, nuanced. And you know what?
In seven years of great telly...
Not one rape.
(Unless you count series four wherein the presence of Riley anally assaulted me with the boredom stick. We skipped over that season this time round, pausing only to watch Hush. )
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maxinstuff
Supporter
Posts: 1,939
Preferred Game Systems: DCC RPG, Shadowrun 5e, Savage Worlds, GURPS 4e, HERO 6e, Mongoose Traveller
Favorite Species of Monkey: Proboscis
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Post by maxinstuff on Oct 30, 2013 23:27:07 GMT -8
Also I think that Unicorn is a fine term for female gamers. Unicorns are beautiful and magical, just like female gamers. I dunno. I mean, I've seen the term used to described bisexual women willing to be the third for a heterosexual couple's threesome. As long as I'm lucky Pierre.
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Post by Kainguru on Oct 31, 2013 2:13:17 GMT -8
Apropos of very little, I've been watching Buffy with my 12 yo daughter. Just saw The Body last night and on re -watching it holds up to be probably the best 45 minutes of TV EVER. I was thinking about the female characters there. All "strong" not in the sense of kick-assery but well rounded, nuanced. And you know what? In seven years of great telly... Not one rape. (Unless you count series four wherein the presence of Riley anally assaulted me with the boredom stick. We skipped over that season this time round, pausing only to watch Hush. ) Hold on . . . Did you miss the Spike Buffy sexual tension/conflict bit after Buffy is resurrected. Given the shows classification it was never shown or directly referenced BUT it was definitely implied with the additional caveat that taking advantage of someone (ie the post resurrection traumatised Buffy) by abusing a position of trust or power (ie Spike) is still rape - because Buffy said 'yes' it wasn't actually consensual as she was, to paraphrase Buffy, 'mixed up and confused'. Buffy acts out the part of an abused partner who cannot tear herself away from her abuser but is tormented by it's continuance as a cypher for victims of rape/molestation who remain silent and partners who remain in abusive relationships. Further to that Spike sexually assaults Buffy before running off and getting a soul. Sure no penetration but that's a very narrow definition and not possible to show in a series like Buffy. Did you also miss the Anya origin story - demoness of vengeance specifically against males that have wronged females. Again the program's classification prevented directly referencing certain acts as 'wronging women'. There were always two versions of Buffy aired in the UK - the PG heavily censored and edited version and the M version shown later at night. If you are watching it with your 12 year old I suspect you are watching the heavily edited version . . . Being a huge Buffy fan at the time I watched both versions but found the edited version lost a lot in translation and could frequently leave glaring plot holes and/or leave some characters severely underdeveloped eg Riley (he's cypher for functional drug addiction and it's consequences and the hazards of recovery afterwards ie: sometimes you lose more than you gain, initially) Aaron
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Post by Kainguru on Oct 31, 2013 3:26:49 GMT -8
Also I think that Unicorn is a fine term for female gamers. Unicorns are beautiful and magical, just like female gamers. I dunno. I mean, I've seen the term used to described bisexual women willing to be the third for a heterosexual couple's threesome. Can such a unicorn be persuaded to wear a gimp suit? *walks off pondering with a tape measure, some uncut leather and a picture of a unicorn with measurements* Aaron
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Post by Kainguru on Oct 31, 2013 3:31:27 GMT -8
Imagine a world in which a toxic substance is constantly released into the environment, and this substance drives young men to kill and cause all manner of violence. It permeates everywhere, but it is most concentrated in the cities, hiking crime rates and causing mayhem. The state takes many measures, imprisoning huge swaths of the population, and certain minorities are blamed for the devastation. This apocalyptic hellscape was a thing worldwide from about 1950 to 1990, and the toxic substance was lead. A lot of science has gone into figuring out how bad lead is for individuals and tracking environmental concentrations along with crime statistics, and it looks like the rise of lead products and the eventual banning of lead paint and anti-knock chemicals has reduced crime a great deal. Yes, you can clearly use this scenario in a game. I'm inclined to agree, and it has definitely been suggested as one of several possible links, but as the researchers maxim dictates (said with a yoda voice) "causation a correlation does not make" . . . There are some very interesting anthropological interpretations of the same data sets floating around Aaron
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Post by Grog on Oct 31, 2013 5:25:59 GMT -8
Maybe this should really just be a letter to the show:
I have to wonder, why are we okay with brutal murders, genocide, torture, poisoning, theft, betrayal, incest, (the list could probably go on), in our games but not rape? This is not to say that I'm okay with rape in my games. (See below) My point is, very early on in the show someone wrote in because of something distinctly offensive that hosts said. They toed a very fine and, in my opinion, very rational line. They said, if I recall, something to the effect of: "we're truly sorry that we offended you, but we will not say that particular topic is off limits because that makes every other offensive thing we say infinitely more offensive." By saying we're not okay with rape, aren't we somehow saying that we are okay with everything else that goes on in our games?
I'm not any more okay with the wanton violence than I am sexual violence or anything else in that vein. I'll admit that in the middle of a session, with quite a bit of alcohol in me, I have said things that I later realized crossed a line for me personally. I sent an e-mail to the crew a while ago as an attempt to unburden myself of one of these memories. I attempted to make it light-hearted, telling it as a funny gaming horror story, but I almost wish I could append this whole reflection to it as a way of clarification.
For some time I've been trying to develop games in which the mental damage of hurting, torturing, lying to, or killing someone really challenges my players and their characters. This is a very tough sell. I find that some of my players are willing to entertain this type of game while others want nothing to do with it. "If I can't kill things willy nilly, why bother?" I was initially drawn to role playing and writing fiction not because I wanted to kill things, but because I wanted to explore what violence and darkness does to a person after the fact, without you know, doing it myself and going insane.
World of Darkness has always done the whole "plumb the dark pits of the human soul" thing pretty well, which is why I like the system. In their new rules update (free for the downloading), they introduced "breaking points" which are essentially moments in which you make a sanity/integrity check. I will probably introduce this familiar mechanic into other games that I run over time. They make one important point: killing someone is always a breaking point. If a GM/Storyteller keeps that one rule in their game, it'll change things real quick. Even witnessing a murder or dead body will be a breaking point for all but the most hardened crime scene investigators.
All that said, I would never include rape in a game I was running without putting a long, hard thought into it. However, I'm not going to say that sexual violence is explicitly off limits when everything else is fair game. I don't like what that says about my attitudes to violence in general. If I included such an event in my game, it wouldn't be flippant. It would be bad. Characters would break. It would likely become one of the central cruxes of the story. And I wouldn't do it unless I was sure that all of my players were okay with "going there", in the same way that I am very delicate about realistic battlefield combat when I'm playing with my two-tour Iraq medic. I'm glad we're having conversations about sexual violence in our games, and I believe it's important for each group to establish lines that they will not cross. Now, when are we going to start having those conversations about the other things we include in our games?
Grog
P.S. I would like to note that the hosts have made a number of really "offensive" comments about sex, violence, and sexual aggression/violence in the past. I know they are not rapists, murderers or bad people (well, most of them). I still love the show, and understand that, as someone said at one point, we joke about the things that make us uncomfortable because we are trying to come to terms with them. So yeah. That's all I've got.
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Post by Kainguru on Oct 31, 2013 5:39:11 GMT -8
I still love the show, and understand that, as someone said at one point, we joke about the things that make us uncomfortable because we are trying to come to terms with them. So yeah. That's all I've got. Sigmund Freud, in his 1928 (published, written in 1927) essay on the roll of humour in both psychoanalysis, the development of the psyche and interpersonal relationships/communication. Loads of people bag big time on Freud but this one paper is well worth a read by anyone . . . . www.scribd.com/doc/34515345/Sigmund-Freud-Humor-1927Aaron
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Post by Houndin on Oct 31, 2013 6:15:43 GMT -8
I missed out on the live chat for the episode, but a question that came up to me during the discussion of rape and taboo/uncomfortable topics is:
Is there a double standard? Can the GM use one of these topics as a plot feature either on or off camera instead of a PC and have it become a motivating force for the party? Or would it still be a topic that should be discussed OOC with the players prior to the session?
(i.e. Trailing a raiding party of Orcs or other such creatures and intercepting them while they are plundering a village. Some of them engaged in doing horrible things to the women of the village.
Alt i.e. Playing in a modern game taking place in an 3rd world hot-spot (Rwanda comes to mind) where children are used as soldiers and women are treated horrendously.)
Thoughts?
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nanoboy
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 142
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Post by nanoboy on Oct 31, 2013 7:04:57 GMT -8
Imagine a world in which a toxic substance is constantly released into the environment, and this substance drives young men to kill and cause all manner of violence. It permeates everywhere, but it is most concentrated in the cities, hiking crime rates and causing mayhem. The state takes many measures, imprisoning huge swaths of the population, and certain minorities are blamed for the devastation. This apocalyptic hellscape was a thing worldwide from about 1950 to 1990, and the toxic substance was lead. A lot of science has gone into figuring out how bad lead is for individuals and tracking environmental concentrations along with crime statistics, and it looks like the rise of lead products and the eventual banning of lead paint and anti-knock chemicals has reduced crime a great deal. Yes, you can clearly use this scenario in a game. I'm inclined to agree, and it has definitely been suggested as one of several possible links, but as the researchers maxim dictates (said with a yoda voice) "causation a correlation does not make" . . . There are some very interesting anthropological interpretations of the same data sets floating around Aaron The thing about the studies on lead is that they take enough approaches and make enough considerations to go beyond simple correlation. There is good physiological data indicating the effect on the individual, and the epidemiology went beyond simple correlation, as it addressed specific areas within cities, across countries, and through time. It also attempted to remove other statistical biases. Personally, I think it's proof enough, and there are interesting implications. The game master may, of course, ramp up the effect of some terrible fictional pollutant that turns innocents into killers or some such thing.
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