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I can see rape being used as a way to establish that the BBEG (or one of his underlings) is a Complete Monster. However, inflicting the rape on one of the PCs? Not at all cool...time to vote that guy out as GM, and most likely off the island entirely. Rolling some dice and saying she "enjoyed" it? There's no voting involved, there's not even any finishing the session. That game and that campaign is OVER, and that guy is never allowed in another game that I'm playing in.
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*Reads thread*
What is wrong with these people? Sexual assault in a game without warning is one of the worst things you can do, especially if you have no idea about what has happened in the lives of the players and their loved ones.
I suspect the reason it comes up so often is it's a reliable way of upping the emotional stakes and establishing that a character is nasty. If your audience reads action books or watches action movies they're probably a little numb to assault, battery and even murder - so if you want to make them despise your villain, you need something with a little more oomph.
am i the only one who finds this a sad commentary on our society today? we're so desensitized to violence that we need MORE to make us invest emotionally.
How about a four page cryptogram with made up symbols and combined letters like 'st' and 'th'. Campaign couldn't continue until the puzzle was solved. Took about a month.I did something similar recently, but I let the PCs make linguistics skill checks or use spells to get hints. (This word is "the", this letter is "ch", etc) They solved the cypher quickly, but transcribing the message took over an hour, which was a lot longer than I expected.
Aaaaand unfortunately, the deciphered message was a logic puzzle which took them over two hours (thankfully, out of game and away from the table between sessions) to solve. Probably won't be doing that again.
Are you kidding? I'd have had a Blast doing that!!! Hell, I'd finish it on my own and ask for more! Does that make me a freak? ;p
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...Does that make me a freak? ;p
are you sure you want an answer? ;p
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Or can you think of something MUCH WORSE?I think the worst possible thing a DM could do is to not show up for the game. However, I'd heard enough horror stories about bad DMs, that maybe showing up is the worst thing they could do. Sort of a damned if you do, and damned if you don't situation.
Y'know, I did this to a group I was GM'ing for once.
Of course, in my defense... I didn't show up for the game (and didn't call and let them know I wasn't going to make it), because I was semi-conscious in a hospital emergency room, with a broken arm, after being hit by a car (I was on a bicycle when I encountered the car... and had been on my way home from school, with intent to go on to the place the game was at after I picked up my game stuff). Happened almost 30 years ago... haven't done that to a gaming group since (been absent as a player more than a few times due to unavoidable circumstances, but not without due notification).
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...because everyone knows being tortured makes you evil right? σ_σ
The more you know? <(?.?)>== 彡ミ☆ミ彡ミ☆
Ever hear of Stockholm Syndrome? :P
Ever hear of Stockholm Syndrome? :P...because everyone knows being tortured makes you evil right? σ_σ
The more you know? <(?.?)>== 彡ミ☆ミ彡ミ☆
Actually yes, yes I have. The page I linked mentions it as well.
I can see rape being used as a way to establish that the BBEG (or one of his underlings) is a Complete Monster. However, inflicting the rape on one of the PCs? Not at all cool...time to vote that guy out as GM, and most likely off the island entirely. Rolling some dice and saying she "enjoyed" it? There's no voting involved, there's not even any finishing the session. That game and that campaign is OVER, and that guy is never allowed in another game that I'm playing in.
There is a reason I've never played in another game he was GMing, ever.
Being a young boy with nice hair and a pretty face makes you just as much a target...
That said, rape is very common. It is common in war. It is common in peace. It is so common that some 1 in 3 or 4 women depending on who you ask is at least sexually assaulted at some point in her life and the average age is pretty young. That means that there are a lot of men who will do it.
Just for the record, a lot of women will do it too. Some of the worst sex offenders and child abusers are women. Female sexual predators aren't as rare as people might think they are, and I have family members who have been abused at the hands of women. Just tossing that out there. However, society at large seems to be very sexist in this regard, which even contributes to rape is funny tropes, and sometimes gives an unfair impression. ಠ_ಠ
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This is from wiki about South Africa: One in three of the 4,000 women questioned by the Community of Information, Empowerment and Transparency said they had been raped in the past year.[68] More than 25% of South African men questioned in a survey admitted to raping someone; of those, nearly half said they had raped more than one person, according to a new study conducted by the Medical Research Council (MRC).[69][70] A 2010 study led by the government-funded Medical Research Foundation says that in Gauteng province, more than 37 percent of men said they had raped a woman. Nearly 7 percent of the 487 men surveyed said they had participated in a gang rape.[71] Among children, a survey found 11% of boys and 4% of girls admitted to forcing someone else to have sex with them while in another survey among 1,500 schoolchildren in the Soweto township, a quarter of all the boys interviewed said that 'jackrolling', a term for gang rape, was fun.
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Holy crap. ố_ố
So personally, I don't like the thought of rape, at all. I think the human condition is pretty terrible and people need to be prepared to take their defense into their own hands. That said, when it comes to Role Playing Games my fun and immersion requires that the...
Like I said before. I've been sexually abused before. It's not really something people want to talk about, and yet at the same time it's something that's kind of been in D&D for a long time. The half-orc for the longest time has been the quintessential rape-child race for about as long as memory serves, and let's not forget that it seems like lots of really not-nice things just love engaging in certain activities which have obvious results. Even the old 60 Minutes episode interviewing some gamers and Gary Gygax, one of the interviewed folks notes the heroes has being against the bad guys who "rape, pillage, and plunder".
But then again, D&D also has demons, devils, torture, murder, and it seems perfectly acceptable to magically napalm strike goblins and burn them to death with fire, and the latter isn't even considered dubious by most folks on the boards. It almost seems wrong to me to suggest that burning someone alive and snuffing their lives out, is somehow less horrible and more acceptable than sexual assault or abuse.
I wonder if it's because we're so insensitive to violence as a culture. Sure, inflicting third degree to lethal burns on a living sentient creature is considered totally A-Ok, but no one wants to admit that rape victims even exist?
It's ironic. I posted that horror story, which is a true story I might add, because I thought it was pretty terrible on multiple levels (the trivialization of the act, the completely BS way he said the PC enjoyed it, effectively taking away my choice to even have a voice in the situation) and yet here I am somewhat dumbfounded by some of the responses and the anger towards the incident, for reasons that seem weird to me as someone who was actually molested. Maybe I should have been BBQed over an open fireball, since that would apparently be more acceptable and humane than my being sexually abused and yet growing up to accept what happened and speak about it. ಠ_ಠ
Being a young boy with nice hair and a pretty face makes you just as much a target...
Let's leave the clerics out of this. σ_σ
I can see rape being used as a way to establish that the BBEG (or one of his underlings) is a Complete Monster. However, inflicting the rape on one of the PCs? Not at all cool...time to vote that guy out as GM, and most likely off the island entirely. Rolling some dice and saying she "enjoyed" it? There's no voting involved, there's not even any finishing the session. That game and that campaign is OVER, and that guy is never allowed in another game that I'm playing in.
Bad dms have raped more male character than female characters in games ive been in. So that she would be a he.
I do like your tenacity. Your complete intolerance of it. I run my fantasy a bit dark, but the players have power, and there isn't much of the done to death, you are captured with no possibility of doing anything, so unlikely to be at a rapists mercy. So I'd have to say the rape of a pc could happen in my game, but you would have to really get into a very specific set of circumstances (lose a fight to a cruel jailor and are taken alive, no one knows where you are, you arent especially valuable to keep intact). A lot of bad news would have to come together, and death is more likely. A DM running a rape simulator, not cool. Especially when the dm that raped the party wizard (with a female ogre) seemed to get so much of a kick out of hurting the players. Hmm, standing up, "this game is over weird rapist dm" would have been a beautiful counter.
It is better as a justification for offing a villain. And amongst their many crimes... In fantasy like GRR Martin's world, it features a lot. I sometimes wonder about that writer.
Ever hear of Stockholm Syndrome? :P...because everyone knows being tortured makes you evil right? σ_σ
The more you know? <(?.?)>== 彡ミ☆ミ彡ミ☆
You have founded a new faction: The Agents of the Dickwolves. Recruitment is... *closes book* I'm going home.
I knew from page one this was going to devolve into the rpg rape debate. I am surprised, and honestly somewhat disgusted, that the moderators haven't locked this thread yet.
Mabven, what is wrong with sober discussion, with some attempts at humour, on sensitive topics?
Dnd covers a lot of ground, it isn't always goodberries and optimisation.
I agree with cranewings and loyalist so far the discussion has been surprisingly civil and handled with an unusual amount of maturity.
What here is bugging you?
Other evil things a dm can do. Create a world, and try and force you into his belief system, which is so obviously conveyed through the fantasy world. Try to punish you via the gods if you don't go along with it.
E.g. in this world there is a god of contracts. All mercs/adventurers agree and worship the god of contracts. Contracts are signed via holy ritual, and if it is ever broken the god and his servants know, the breaker glows and is marked. All mercs do not break contracts, not even for more coin or superior benefits.
???
DM: you must sign the contract and participate in the ritual.
Me: Er, my rogue refuses to sign the contract.
DM: you must, the npcs (our hirers) expect it and look at you suspiciously. It is how it is done.
Player: no I'm not doing the ritual. It is stupid, do you even know what medieval mercenaries were like? Mosca (the rogue) laughs at this.
It was so lawful religious it was nauseating.
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Ashiel, as far as how angry people are about the incidence, I think it is mostly just empathy from easily worked up people. They aren't half as mad about it really as some people get when I tell them I require wizards to make a CMB roll to 5' step (; Mostly though, I think it is just nice people being empathetic.
Yeah, I'd be pissed about the 5ft. step thing too. :P
I suppose I can appreciate the empathy, yet it kind of does bother me a bit as to the unfortunate implications that are unintentionally implied. For example, look at this post:
I knew from page one this was going to devolve into the rpg rape debate. I am surprised, and honestly somewhat disgusted, that the moderators haven't locked this thread yet.
I see this post and it stirs a very negative feeling in my heart. "What, you could burn me to death with a fireball and that's fine, but talking about sexual abuse as a narrative, its implications, or who it affects, and should be locked because you don't want to hear it!?" is heard inside my mind. It makes me angry. "You can watch people get shot, murdered, die on TV, poisoned, and battered on public TV; and you have monsters in this game that can steal your very soul, but you'd rather sweep this under the rug?" is how it makes me feel. ಠ_ಠ
Mabven's post actually upsets me as someone who was sexually abused. Here we could discuss it, how it is used in stories, and how it really shouldn't be used. What upset me the most about that GM in my post? Well, it was that he took away the choice to resist. Even if my character was unable to stop it (due to being dominated), it was the way that he dismissed her anger and said she had to like it, revoking the only say I did have in the matter. Maybe due to my past experiences that struck a cord worst of all, and it caused it to hurt in a way I'd not wish on anyone.
Yet maybe Mabven meant well. Maybe Mabven wants the thread locked because Mabven feels like he or she is somehow protecting those who have been hurt; and yet ironically, invokes more negative emotions than 3.5 Loyalist's joking comments (which made me laugh by the way, good show Loyalist).
While violence is seen as more acceptable, I think it just has to do with the wad of emotion and fear people have about rape. For the most part, people playing paizo games haven't even known anyone that had their family murdered or refuges from a town that got destroyed during a war - and even if they did, those people who have a different god, different skin, be from far away, different language, it isn't the same as hearing about a town in Ohio wiped out by war. Everyone knows someone that has raped or been raped.
I know people in Ohio who have been killed by gang violence. Different people of different races or backgrounds or beliefs, different factions, killing each other. Innocents murdered in the crossfire. I know people who have been burned to death in house fires. A few of my younger brother's best friends just lost three of their siblings in a terrible house fire, and several of them suffered third degree burns and fractured spines (where they leaped from a window to escape the fire). I know people who have been raped too. Yet, it feels like people ignore the pain and suffering that is caused by those things, and sweep sexual abuse under the rug. It bugs me that Mabven probably has no qualms with someone talking about dropping fireballs on sentient living creatures in a story and burning them to death is apparently fine; and yet discussing sexual rape (or any kind of rape even, since rape is not just sexual) in the game means we have to shut up and the thread be locked.
Sorry, I'm kind of rambling at this point...but I mean, I gave an example of the horror story GM incident, and yet I also said I've used sexual assault as a plot point in my own games (the sorceress who was abused, then angry, and then eventually rose above it to find a new peace).
Well sure, y'know what, lock the $@$*ing thread. Let's pretend it doesn't happen. Let's pretend, and use our imaginations, that stuff that hurts doesn't hurt, and doesn't happen; so everyone else gets to feel better about it; until the next time some douchebag GM comes along and rains on somebody's day, when maybe that might have read that thread and learned something. ಠ_ಠ
Rape isn't the only topic I don't enjoy in RPGs.
For example, I don't like stories about people dying from overdosing. I also don't portray cancer victims much, or the real difficulties of getting old. You would be shocked how vibrant all my old npcs are. There are things I don't particularly like DMing because I don't like the topic for one reason or another and so I just don't bring it up.
Understood. There are certain things I simply don't like either. It's entirely fair to ignore them. I don't use certain narratives when running games with my younger brother or children either. And it's entirely acceptable if you just don't want to include such things in your entertainment. There's a reason I really don't like watching movies on Lifetime after all. σ_σ
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Other evil things a dm can do. Create a world, and try and force you into his belief system, which is so obviously conveyed through the fantasy world. Try to punish you via the gods if you don't go along with it.
E.g. in this world there is a god of contracts. All mercs/adventurers agree and worship the god of contracts. Contracts are signed via holy ritual, and if it is ever broken the god and his servants know, the breaker glows and is marked. All mercs do not break contracts, not even for more coin or superior benefits.
???
DM: you must sign the contract and participate in the ritual.
Me: Er, my rogue refuses to sign the contract.
DM: you must, the npcs (our hirers) expect it and look at you suspiciously. It is how it is done.
Player: no I'm not doing the ritual. It is stupid, do you even know what medieval mercenaries were like? Mosca (the rogue) laughs at this.It was so lawful religious it was nauseating.
Wow, that sucks. O.o
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But then again, D&D also has demons, devils, torture, murder, and it seems perfectly acceptable to magically napalm strike goblins and burn them to death with fire, and the latter isn't even considered dubious by most folks on the boards. It almost seems wrong to me to suggest that burning someone alive and snuffing their lives out, is somehow less horrible and more acceptable than sexual assault or abuse.I wonder if it's because we're so insensitive to violence as a culture. Sure, inflicting third degree to lethal burns on a living sentient creature is considered totally A-Ok, but no one wants to admit that rape victims even exist?
I admit that rape (and other sexual abuse) victims exist, and those who have suffered that have my utmost sympathy. I consider rape and sexual abuse utterly, absolutely wrong. I do not blame the victims for it, and I despise those who do. I also don't think burning people to death is a good thing-- at all. No, not okay. Not even close. I (sometimes) justify the use of fire spells and of burning my enemies to ashes in games, the same way I can justify soldiers using flamethrowers-- because it's necessary, it's the best tool for the job, and we have to kill the enemies we're fighting to prevent greater wrongs from happening-- thus, it is (IMO) a case of the "greater good" justifying a "lesser evil". But fire is still a really ugly, painful way to die-- and I cannot and will not justify burning someone to death any other way than in what I've said above, about using it as a tool of warfare in order to prevent worse evils from coming to pass.
Maybe it's just me, but I can see your point about burning someone to death being (arguably) worse than rape. I'd consider doing both to someone probably worst of all then, yet I am very much aware of incidents where that was actually done (and people wonder why I have "issues"). We are way too insensitive as a culture. Worst of all (to me) is that most of the insensitive people have no f***ing clue what these things look like. Sound like. Smell like. What it does to people-- not just the victims and direct survivors, but to everyone else who comes into contact with the evidence and the aftermath. How terrible an indictment it is on all of humanity, that so many people take these things lightly.
It's ironic. I posted that horror story, which is a true story I might add, because I thought it was pretty terrible on multiple levels (the trivialization of the act, the completely BS way he said the PC enjoyed it, effectively taking away my choice to even have a voice in the situation) and yet here I am somewhat dumbfounded by some of the responses and the anger towards the incident, for reasons that seem weird to me as someone who was actually molested. Maybe I should have been BBQed over an open fireball, since that would apparently be more acceptable and humane than my being sexually abused and yet growing up to accept what happened and speak about it.
For what you endured in your own life, you have my sympathy. For the story you presented-- you also have my sympathy, that someone would do that to you in a game. I would not have handled that incident as well as you did in game, because it hits on some of my trigger issues. I again see your point about death by fire being less humane-- doesn't mean that the abuse was okay at all, but you have nothing to be ashamed of or to apologize for over it (whomever it was who committed the abuse-- now, that's another matter).
To why I react and over-react the way I often do on these boards-- I have a lot of mental-emotional scars of my own, and a lot of reasons why they're there. I'm not sure how much I'm willing to discuss that in this forum, but there are reasons and things that happened, that I was exposed to, for why they're there.
Edit-addendum: Ashiel-- I also agree with the points you've made in your post that (in large part) responds to Mabven's comments about closing the thread.
No, you have not yet really over-reacted (not saying go and do it).
:D
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Ashiel, as far as how angry people are about the incidence, I think it is mostly just empathy from easily worked up people. They aren't half as mad about it really as some people get when I tell them I require wizards to make a CMB roll to 5' step (; Mostly though, I think it is just nice people being empathetic.
While violence is seen as more acceptable, I think it just has to do with the wad of emotion and fear people have about rape. For the most part, people playing paizo games haven't even known anyone that had their family murdered or refuges from a town that got destroyed during a war - and even if they did, those people who have a different god, different skin, be from far away, different language, it isn't the same as hearing about a town in Ohio wiped out by war. Everyone knows someone that has raped or been raped.
Well... I'm a lot more angry about these issues of violence and rape, and the casual way they're taken, than I ever would be about the "5' step" house-rule you cite above.
I do generally play in darker games than most folks do, I think. Yes, we know rape happens in the real world, as does murder and all sorts of other violence-- and to me, well, when it gets mentioned in the game world, that's not so much of a problem. When enemies (bad guys, whatever you wanna call it) do that sort of thing-- okay, something's happened that we really need to seek justice for-- if it's still happening somewhere, we need to put a stop to it. That's my usual experience and attitude with these kind of topics in game-- it's a dark line of stories where these are explicitly known to have happened, and are happening, in the game world-- but IMO the excruciatingly explicit details of the crimes do not need to be inflicted on the players, especially without their express consent.
What really upsets me, and upset me about the incident Ashiel related-- is when the players and GM accept these sorts of things as okay, instead of regarding them as the 'Crimes against Humanity' that they are. When anyone at the table (like that GM) is like "rape? yeah, cool... she likes it", someone being that dense, insensitive, uncaring, really sets me off. I really don't like these things being dismissed as unimportant, taken lightly, their effects ignored... even in game, it's a good way to trigger my PTSD issues to have someone make a joke out of s*** like this in an unfunny, insensitive way.
It is still the kind of thing where I enjoy playing characters who are heroes-- where this stuff may have happened in the game world, but by the Gods, we are going to put a stop to as much of it as we can! And in that context, it exists but it's wrong and we're not tolerating it-- I can deal just fine. The moment someone tries to make it something that we should just tolerate and turn a blind eye to, I really have a problem with that.
And in general-- yes, I was a soldier for over 20 years. I feel the same way about unnecessary violence. Violence is sometimes a necessary tool, but IMO even the cleanest, neatest exercise of violence should NOT be taken lightly.
Just to put it clear one more time, for my biggest issue with all this: It's not that it exists-- that's reality, it does exist-- it's that people accept it instead of trying to do something about it.
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I'm with Mabven - take a look at the proportion of posts in this thread where the author CLEARLY didn't have a GM rape their character but is talking about that particular corner case.
DE-RAAAAAAAAILED
I think locking it is stupid, but uh, the couple posts above me aren't really talking about the evil things GM's do are they?
Most evil thing our GM recently did was take Valentine's Day off from our gaming group to be with his wife. THE INHUMANITY! :<
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While violence is seen as more acceptable, I think it just has to do with the wad of emotion and fear people have about rape. For the most part, people playing paizo games haven't even known anyone that had their family murdered or refuges from a town that got destroyed during a war - and even if they did, those people who have a different god, different skin, be from far away, different language, it isn't the same as hearing about a town in Ohio wiped out by war. Everyone knows someone that has raped or been raped.
Gonna add one more point, specifically to this:
One of the many reasons I have severe PTSD-- is that I spent a lot of time, in Iraq and Kosovo, examining (in detail) past incidents where 'crimes against humanity' and/or 'war crimes' had occurred. In doing that, I spent quite a bit of time doing personal, detailed interviews with survivors and witnesses to some of these incidents. I saw some of the places where evidence was found (including a couple of the mass-graves from Saddam's time in Iraq). I had to research, in detail, some of the incidents from other, related wars-- specifically things that had occurred in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, and Afghanistan since 1990.
And for what? So that, for the greater glory of the U.S. Army, we could use this information to try to win people over to our side... (probably useful, and effective for our cause, but it sure as hell ain't doing something that leaves you with a squeaky clean feeling afterwards).
I've seen the dead, I've talked to the refugees, I've talked to people who were brutally gang-raped and left for dead as an act of war in the course of a campaign designed to accomplish ethnic cleansing and/or genocide. I've also talked to survivors of chemical weapons attacks... and torture victims... and survivors of many other brutal crimes.
Y'all wonder why I'm really sensitive to this s***, there it is. Guess I have explained why I really don't like seeing it (in part) after all.
If you'd seen what I've seen, I'm pretty sure all of you would have similarly negative reactions to some of the statements that have come up-- or would have confirmed that you aren't really human, in a moral sense.
Your evidence indicates often aren't moral creatures.
I have lived a sheltered life, with a very low exposure to horror. But I can think of few things so horrific as an interesting thread derailed by the banality of evil.
Seriously, I was overjoyed reading the first 5 or ten posts on this thread - then rape got mentioned - and it's been nothing but 3 pages of pain since.
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Your evidence indicates often aren't moral creatures.
Good point.
Man's inhumanity to his fellow man is nearly ubiquitous throughout history... but we should not tolerate and accept the idea that that need always be the case, and/or that we shouldn't keep striving to do better in how we treat people.
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First, Ashiel, my condolences.
Second, In 37 years of D&D, my observation is that 'GMs' that employ the 'Rape' are 1) young, 2) male 3) sexually repressed 4) sexually inexperienced 5) jerks that seriously need to grow up. The only exception I can remember was a female GM that used one as a pivotal plot device in a game based on 'Luke and Laura'. Whatever that was.
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I admit that rape (and other sexual abuse) victims exist, and those who have suffered that have my utmost sympathy. I consider rape and sexual abuse utterly, absolutely wrong. I do not blame the victims for it, and I despise those who do. I also don't think burning people to death is a good thing-- at all. No, not okay. Not even close. I (sometimes) justify the use of fire spells and of burning my enemies to ashes in games, the same way I can justify soldiers using flamethrowers-- because it's necessary, it's the best tool for the job, and we have to kill the enemies we're fighting to prevent greater wrongs from happening-- thus, it is (IMO) a case of the "greater good" justifying a "lesser evil". But fire is still a really ugly, painful way to die-- and I cannot and will not justify burning someone to death any other way than in what I've said above, about using it as a tool of warfare in order to prevent worse evils from coming to pass.
*nods* Which is one of the reasons I too tend to just accept that stuff like fireball is a weapon and it depends on how you use it, because at the end of the day the best anyone can do is try. I think it's also one of the things that really grinds my gears in alignment discussions, because of the implications of absolutes, which simply does not work.
Maybe it's just me, but I can see your point about burning someone to death being (arguably) worse than rape. I'd consider doing both to someone probably worst of all then, yet I am very much aware of incidents where that was actually done (and people wonder why I have "issues"). We are way too insensitive as a culture. Worst of all (to me) is that most of the insensitive people have no f***ing clue what these things look like. Sound like. Smell like. What it does to people-- not just the victims and direct survivors, but to everyone else who comes into contact with the evidence and the aftermath. How terrible an indictment it is on all of humanity, that so many people take these things lightly.
Agreed. My father was a fireman for many years. He's seen a lot more than I have in my life, and he has told me about a lot of stuff, out of concern for my safety that would make some peoples' skin crawl.
Yeah, we're pretty insensitive as a culture. Hell, I'm probably pretty insensitive too. I mean, I can accept that we have violent forms of entertainment, which includes all forms of media (movies, video games, tabletop games, television, etc), because I know that it's not real in that media. I could log onto Bad Company II servers and run around capturing objectives and shooting virtual people in a Vietnam-based 1st person shooter, toastin' folks with the Flamethrower; but to me it's not the same as actually being in a situation where those things are really happening. Yet, a marine friend of mine who sat in this very den with me and played Resident Evil 5 with me and watched animes with me, was killed in action not long ago. He had barely got off the aircraft when he took a bullet. Now I'll never see him again.
I'll be honest and say I'll still play Bad Company II, and I'll still be playing D&D with all its napalm-wizard and face-melting combat. I will think about him though, and I would love nothing more than for reality to have been like those games where you can just press the reset button, or grab a raise dead and be back in the adventure.
For what you endured in your own life, you have my sympathy. For the story you presented-- you also have my sympathy, that someone would do that to you in a game. I would not have handled that incident as well as you did in game, because it hits on some of my trigger issues. I again see your point about death by fire being less humane-- doesn't mean that the abuse was okay at all, but you have nothing to be ashamed of or to apologize for over it (whomever it was who committed the abuse-- now, that's another matter).
And mine yours. Everyone has their problems and their demons they have to deal with. The world has never been a perfect place. It's filled with pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness, and good and evil. The GM was actually someone I would call a friend (at least at the time and even for some time after). He didn't know that about me ('cause honestly I don't make a habit of advertising it or anything), so while I wasn't amused, I also wasn't really angry with him.
Perhaps interestingly, I don't even hold ill will towards the person who was involved in my sexual abuse. That person was also abused, and I don't think that it was meant to harm me. I think Carl Jung said healthy people do not torture, but the tortured; or something like that. I've even hugged that person years later, and I wouldn't tell that person's name because I think they have gone through enough themselves, and I would call that person a good person who perhaps made a bad mistake. I guess this is my token of humanity to share for today.
I think the part that bugged me in this thread was the implication that these things are somehow different. That people are so ready to lock a thread because something seems a bit uncomfortable, or inadvertently suggesting (probably accidentally) that burning people up, sticking pointy objects in them, transforming people into monsters, stealing souls, and all kinds of crazy fantasy violence was somehow more acceptable or less inhumane than talking about sexual abuse. Probably not what they meant, but it seems like the logical conclusion.
Media, including fantasy RPGs, has value for exploring certain things. I admitted to including NPCs and stories which have included such things. One being the commoner who was hurt by the guard, who became a sorceress, and eventually found peace thanks to the PCs; another was a story that involved the Book of Exalted Deeds, a brother and a sister, and the misdirection of good with disastrous consequences. That story actually is very dark so I'm gonna spoiler text it.
The priest then contaminates the town's water supply with these ravages, figuring he will wipe out evil from in the town, since naturally they will only affect people who are evil. It brought te town into chaos. Evil people existed alongside good and neutral people for years. Many were selfish. Some of the noble families were hit hard by it, and yet everyone suffered. Two of the main NPCs were siblings. A brother whose alignment had taken a hit because of his ruthlessness that he developed taking care of his sister on the streets, and his sister who was neutral good. Unfortunately, he was driven mad by the ravages and in a bout of uncontrolled lust raped her, leaving her pregnant as a result. The party found them when she was trying to nurse him back to health, despite everything.
The party witnessed some terrible things in the town, and eventually traced the source of the contamination back to the priest who had infected the water supply. Ironically the Lawful Evil alchemist in the party called him a sick monster, and there was a very huge struggle with the priests' followers, summoned celestial monsters, and eventually tracking the priest down and exposing him for his crimes against the people of the town. The priest realized he had become everything he hate when he drank of the water as well, and was afflicted as well; leading him to have a crisis of faith, and his followers disbanding.
The party helped the two siblings move to a different city, and gave out of their own pockets to find them a good home and get them settled. The Lawful Evil alchemist recommending the brother for apprenticeship with an apothecary in the new city, and forging them new ID papers to allow him to escape his criminal past, and insisted that her share of the payment they received from the town for solving their troubles go to them. The world is like that sometimes. It's not always just the good guy and the bad guy.
To why I react and over-react the way I often do on these boards-- I have a lot of mental-emotional scars of my own, and a lot of reasons why they're there. I'm not sure how much I'm willing to discuss that in this forum, but there are reasons and things that happened, that I was exposed to, for why they're there.
We all have our crosses to bear. It can take time for them to get lighter, but they do. Maybe, one day, it won't feel so much as your bearing it as its bearing you.
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Maybe GMs can look at these things and put some thought into what they're doing, and not make some mistakes that others do. RPGs are a beautiful thing. They let us live different lives. They let us dream in a new way. They let us explore things we wouldn't have known otherwise, and see things through new eyes. I apologize if any of this has been a derailment. Hopefully someone will find value in it nonetheless.
EDIT: Wow, I got super-ninja'd during that post. (O.O) *reads up*
First, Ashiel, my condolences.
Second, In 37 years of D&D, my observation is that 'GMs' that employ the 'Rape' are 1) young, 2) male 3) sexually repressed 4) sexually inexperienced 5) jerks that seriously need to grow up. The only exception I can remember was a female GM that used one as a pivotal plot device in a game based on 'Luke and Laura'. Whatever that was.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RynFTJdyldg&feature=related
I have lived a sheltered life, with a very low exposure to horror. But I can think of few things so horrific as an interesting thread derailed by the banality of evil.
Seriously, I was overjoyed reading the first 5 or ten posts on this thread - then rape got mentioned - and it's been nothing but 3 pages of pain since.
*pats* <(o_o<)
That's ok. (>o_o<)
Let's instead talk about something really evil, but less real! <(^-^)>
Swarms of dire earwigs! J<(^.^)>|≡
Audience: ಠ_ಠ
I've had lots of evil GMs. So here we go:
1) Cut off the arms of a martial PC and allow him find some kind of alternate way to damage opponents. For example, a repeater crossbow that fires from his head. Other PCs have to reload it. Do not allow access to the Regenerate spell.
2) Paralyze a PC from the neck down with a critical hit, if you use critical cards. Do that to 3+ of his low level PCs (who can't afford Regenerate).
3) Make up some twisted puzzle that makes sense to you, and then call your players stupid because they can't figure out your twisted random crap, effectively ending a 6 month campaign.
4) Have the GM PC always save the day, take more loot than everyone else, get all the killing blows, and be generally be better than everyone else.
5) Allow their girlfriend to play a god (in disguise of course) while everyone else is playing the equivalent of peasants. Allow said girlfriend to smite one of the PC peasants for backtalk, with no repercussions. Yup...
Ah... memories.
I've had lots of evil GMs. So here we go:
1) Cut off the arms of a martial PC and allow him find some kind of alternate way to damage opponents. Do not allow access to the Regenerate spell.
2) Paralyze a PC from the neck down with a critical hit, if you use critical cards. Disallow Regenerate.
3) Make up some twisted puzzle that makes sense to you, and then call your players stupid because they can't figure out your twisted random crap, effectively ending a 6 month campaign.
4) Have the GM PC always save the day, take more loot than everyone else, get all the killing blows, and be generally be better than everyone else.
5) Allow their girlfriend to play a god (in disguise of course) while everyone else is playing the equivalent of peasants. Allow said girlfriend to smite one of the PC peasants for backtalk, with no repercussions. Yup...
Ah... memories.
Ouch. >.<
My heart goes out to you dude. ^.^"First, Ashiel, my condolences.
Second, In 37 years of D&D, my observation is that 'GMs' that employ the 'Rape' are 1) young, 2) male 3) sexually repressed 4) sexually inexperienced 5) jerks that seriously need to grow up. The only exception I can remember was a female GM that used one as a pivotal plot device in a game based on 'Luke and Laura'. Whatever that was.
S'cool Bwang; and thanks. I'm alright. Also, yeah, it's true, most of that sort of thing does fall into that general subgroup of gamers. I might need to see what Luke and Laura is, 'cause I've never heard of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RynFTJdyldg&feature=related
Hey thanks Loyalist. I'ma watch this now. ^-^
EDIT: It's interesting. I'm not entirely certain I buy into it whole cart, but he makes some good points. I'm not sure I buy that your personas in media such as video games are a means of displaying your true self, 'lest I would probably have multiple personality disorder in addition to just hearing voices. :P
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There was a priest in this city who acquired the "ravages" from the Book of Exalted Deeds. Effectively poisons that only afflict evil creatures, which are so inhumanely cruel that the designers must have been joking when they decided they were good. They do things like make people starve to death no matter how much they eat, get lost in their own reflections until they wither away, or suffer from uncontrollable lust and sexual urges that no matter what they do they cannot find release (I am not making this up, this is what they are said to do in the book).
And there's another reason I'd love to see the Book of Exalted Deeds idea revisited: To get a "Book O' Good" minus all the morally dissonant derp.
It's like someone was shooting for the "Good Is Not Nice" trope, and forgot that while Good doesn't have to be nice, it does have to be...y'know...good. :|
There was a priest in this city who acquired the "ravages" from the Book of Exalted Deeds. Effectively poisons that only afflict evil creatures, which are so inhumanely cruel that the designers must have been joking when they decided they were good. They do things like make people starve to death no matter how much they eat, get lost in their own reflections until they wither away, or suffer from uncontrollable lust and sexual urges that no matter what they do they cannot find release (I am not making this up, this is what they are said to do in the book).And there's another reason I'd love to see the Book of Exalted Deeds idea revisited: To get a "Book O' Good" minus all the morally dissonant derp.
It's like someone was shooting for the "Good Is Not Nice" trope, and forgot that while Good doesn't have to be nice, it does have to be...y'know...good. :|
I hate both Bo*Ds, but I hate the Book of Exalted Deeds most of all. At least the Book of Vile Darkness was at least honest about it being reprehensible evil of extreme levels not generally suitable for most games and comically bad, quite literally being evil for the sake of being evil.
The Book of Exalted Deeds? Oh my god that book is so terrible. It spends the first 25% of the book telling you all that there is to being good, some of it a bit questionable (including bits of alignment "stupid good"), and the other 75% giving you [Good] ways to violate every last detail of what the book just spelled out as being good/evil. We have afflictions, ravages, spells that force yourself on others, etc.
One that always stuck out to me as horribly evil was this one where you rip the soul of of some fool, trap it inside a gemstone for 1 year, where it is forced to face its guilt during the time, and is forced to match your alignment at the end of this imposed imprisonment. And that's a good spell. :o
Worse yet, the Book of Vile Darkness has an evil equivalent called "Mind Rape" which has the Evil descriptor, but apparently just because it has "Rape" in the name, because if you actually look at the stuff that it does, it is like a combination of various enchantment spells that aren't aligned.
The ironic part? While the first spell is effectively a spell for trapping, torturing, and forcing enemies to convert to your alignment, the second spell actually has the potential for positive uses; including the ability to erase trauma. An innocent was tortured and debased by the evil doers, and while cure and maybe regenerate will take care of the physical damage, you're afraid he or she will never be able to sleep again? Cast the spell and you can replace all of the senseless horror they went through with something less traumatic.
Honestly, the Bo*Ds are the lowest that D&D has ever sunk. Ever. No game that uses both of them will make a lick of sense in terms of plausible morality, and if you think the alignment discussions on these boards are stupid? Pfft, try a discussion where people reference those books... =.=
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One that always stuck out to me as horribly evil was this one where you rip the soul of of some fool, trap it inside a gemstone for 1 year, where it is forced to face its guilt during the time, and is forced to match your alignment at the end of this imposed imprisonment. And that's a good spell. :o
Todd Stewart himself had some unkind words about that spell. I just rewrote the damn thing into something that was meant to aid repentant and willing creatures that had [evil] in their make-up with their rise.
The main wallbanger I remember from Vile Darkness was that it apparently equated BDSM with rape, human sacrifice, and destroying souls. WAT
One that always stuck out to me as horribly evil was this one where you rip the soul of of some fool, trap it inside a gemstone for 1 year, where it is forced to face its guilt during the time, and is forced to match your alignment at the end of this imposed imprisonment. And that's a good spell. :o
Todd Stewart himself had some unkind words about that spell. I just rewrote the damn thing into something that was meant to aid repentant and willing creatures that had [evil] in their make-up with their rise.
The main wallbanger I remember from Vile Darkness was that it apparently equated BDSM with rape, human sacrifice, and destroying souls. WAT
Ri'Hanna the Bard: "Clubs and slings may make ears ring, but spiked chains and whips excite me!"
Paladin: "HEATHEN!" *SMITE*Bard: "OMG-WTF-dude!?" *falls down*
ಠ_ಠ
Yeah but vow of poverty was so cool we can never let them go. It's like sweet tea for the south. My only problem with Sherman was he didn't get the recipe first. (;
Well Vow of Poverty so badly written that it doesn't actually work at all id you follow the RAW, and like many other feats is actually selfish in nature. You are not, for example, permitted to own a potion in which to heal your downed allies with in case they are placed in critical condition without breaking your vow. Meanwhile, you are required to take a full share of treasure, even though your allies have to foot the bill for any items that you need to "borrow" as not to basically let your allies die because you're too stubborn to actually own a potion of stabilize for when the Fighter is dying, or owning a wand to prevent your party from dying while fighting evil. In essence, damned either way.
There was also the fact that the benefits were really only worthwhile for a druid or druid/monk (not even a monk, that was a trap) since the druid could make up all the other critical stuff you were giving up with their spells, and they got all the benefits while wild-shaping. For every other class, it was effectively a trap, so not only were you a drain on your party from a stress-level perspective, but you also end up as a drain on your party as being the dinky not-as-strong dude who just seems to be good at syphoning up the treasure that real heroes use to do good without getting killed trying.
The only way I could imagine someone screwing up a vow of poverty worse than the Book of Exalted Deeds would be if they made you forgo all equipment and then gave you something really stupidly lame and minor like a little extra ki or something...
Wait. ಠ_ಠ
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I'll tell you the most evil thing I did as a GM:
The party opens a door into a room covered by magical darkness - of the deepest kind. A voice speaks from within:
"Please do not bring any light into this room as my gaze has a curse that it turns all it falls upon to ashes. There is an exit from the room at this end, however you must walk straight across if you are to avoid taking damage from trapped areas of brown mold under the floor."
There are, indeed, areas of trapped brown mold under the floor, which can be detected even through the darkness. However floating in the middle of the room is a sphere of annihilation.
The voice, of course, is just a magic mouth. Most of the party trusted it, even when they gathered that others were disappearing they just thought it was some sort of teleportal. Two players didn't trus it - they went around the room and found a mouldy skeleton on an old throne with a scepter and a crown. One put on the crown (loony) and thence gained the ability to turn people to ashes with his gaze, which he subsequently did to the other.
It was a very long time ago, and was my homage to Tomb of Horrors.
To my mind being *evil* as a GM is setting up situations where characters get themselves killed but can only blame themselves.
Another situation I set up when I was thinking along similar lines was having an imp being rude and unpleasant (but not attacking) players by the door to a room, then having the owning magic user have his most powerful death spell ready on the other side for the second the players opened the door. The players had simply forgotten that an imp can be a magic-user's familiar.
Richard
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Removed some posts--no edition snarking please. So so tired of it. Please post civilly, and I would prefer that the rape discussion is dropped (as it doesn't 100% have a place in this thread).
Also, perhaps this thread is better served as to what the DM/GM can do to your game and your character, rather than personal gripes about past GMs. (I'm sure there's a thread in gamer talk for past GM horror stories.)
Except it does have a place, it directly relates to the topic.
Trying to stop us posting what we want to post LE Liz? Its on dms and their acts.
We don't care if you are tired of edition snarking. There is much valid snark to be made.
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So I had a DM that ran us through a sea campaign in 2nd ed Forgotten Realms. We were attacked by some very organized pirates. But we were 7th level and most of the pirates were less than CR1. Under the rules we could attack 7x per round against opponents who were less than CR1. Instead of letting them board my precious ship I boarded their massive ship and slaughtered the crew and officers (who were level appropriate). Now WE had the big pirate ship. So he sank it right off the bat.
Then we got back on our ship and used it to capture the two chase ships used by the big slow ship to catch us. Then we had a couple adventures and found a ton of treasure. So we sailed for home (Selgaunt?). Well in the middle of the sea I ran into a rocky outcrop that stranded our caravel and started sinking it and one of the captured ships. So we transferred the treasure and crew to the remaining ship which was styled after a viking longboat. But we were out of food and the closest port was a pirate port.
So we sail into that. I give instructions to the 1st officer (a PC) that the crew is to stay on board and wait. That way we could sail out as soon as I acquired food and no one in the PIRATE port would know we had tons of treasure.
Of course as soon as I leave the 1st officer gives everyone shore leave and leaves himself. Which leaves just the ship's cook (PC) onboard. So I am kidnapped (knocked out no save). The ship is attacked and the cook killed (even though he swam underwater because he was some sort of disguised fish man) and the ship and our treasure taken. I'm a good natured fellow and in a game full of screw jobs this one was the biggest.
The worst part is that he was worried what we would do with with all that treasure and didn't want it to wreck his campaign. It was stupid because in the 1st adventure a powerful NPC had set us up with a ship to explore in exchange for most of the treasure. So he could have taken most of the treasure that way let us have a triumph for once by sailing home with a bunch of treasure.
My GM style is based upon being the opposite of this guy.
*edited after reading the rest of the thread*
I'm jumping to the end, but I do want to say up front that while this involves touchy subjects, I'm trying to keep it as close to the point of this thread as can be.
I also do not begrudge my DM against any of this. He and I are still great friends.
My last major campaign before as a player was a 3.5 war epic that took us from 1st to epic levels. Before we ever started rolling dice our DM made it clear to us that a major facet of this campaign would be the exploration of real evil and how good people deal with and fight against it, and what it could do to them. We all knew this going in and agreed. Book of Vile Darkness and Exalted Deeds weren't just allowed, they were encouraged and we were warned they would be used against us.
So we've reached twentieth level and a player who had to leave is back in town for a weekend and asks if he can rejoin for a one off. Our DM comes up with this great session where my character (A human Dragonrider, very classic Knight concept) his dragon and the party's paladin join forces with our returned Monk angel to defend the Infinite Staircase against an army of demons (Mostly Balors...)
As the battle ends, the three of us (Me, Paladin and Dragon) are pitched from stairs and magically teleport... to the Abyss.
A few sessions of "adventuring" (read: Surviving) the horrors of the Abyss, we get to meet Grazzt. And my character ends up (unknown to the other player character) cutting a deal with the Demon Lord. That he would lead Grazzt' forces against a rival stronghold, and that he would spend the night with one of Grazzt's servants.
The night ended with my Knight in his room, and a Lilitu walks in, spiky tentacles and all. I valiantly utter something like "Do what you will, I'll not give you the satisfaction of enjoying it.
DM rolls some dice... and I do. My knight picks up the "masochist flaw"
The gambit worked. We survived the abyss, got my companions to safety and returned to fight in the war. But the implications of those few sessions to my character were profound. That he had sunk so low from his code, even to help his friends, weighed heavily on him. and the question that he could now have a demonic son...
I stress again, there wasn't any wool pulled over my eyes. Normally our games ran and still do run the PG-13 range, and the game was in no way a "sex game" in any sense. (even that scene "faded to black" as it were) But while it was one of the hardest games I've played in, we still talk about our accomplishments and our failures in that one, even years later.
I've some other, more PC, stories from that game that could fall into GM evilness. I'll post them up when I can.
Ouch. >.<
My heart goes out to you dude. ^.^"
Thanks, but when I look back it's actually hilarious. Even at the time, I just rolled with it and it was kind of funny. I try not to take roleplaying too seriously, it's all in good fun. If it continues too long though, it's GM abuse, but I have the power to leave any game I don't like (which happenned twice, especially the girlfriend one, which was extremely annoying).
There are, indeed, areas of trapped brown mold under the floor, which can be detected even through the darkness. However floating in the middle of the room is a sphere of annihilation.
That's hilarious and very very evil. Especially the crown at the end. LOL.
No game that uses both of them will make a lick of sense in terms of plausible morality,
Just from personal experience I need to disagree. While I agree the books are horribly broken, the one game I've enjoyed their use in was one where it was clear they would be used and that they would need to be balanced.
EDIT: but I digress, not the thread for that discussion.
Senior Software Developer
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We don't care if you are tired of edition snarking. There is much valid snark to be made.
Paizo cares, Paizo is tired of edition snarking, we run this website and get to make the rules. Feel free to edition snark all you like on your own website.