
wertyou2 |
Disclaimer: I know this forum is primarily for DMs of WotR, so I'm asking this as a player (albeit one that's nearing the end of Book 5).
This campaign has had a lot of very disturbing content, particularly sexual assault kind of stuff. We walk through dungeons, and cultists are eating people, raping people, skinning people alive, yadda yadda yadda. Baphomet, the main boss of the whole campaign, has been described primarily as "the Demon Lord of Rape". We go to the Midnight Isles and it's just nothing but obnoxious prostitutes. That was my first time ever plane hopping in the game, player or GM, and it was a huge letdown.
I've asked my DM about the unnaturally high concentration of this content, and he's told me that the campaign was written that way because of how depraved Demons are. I agree that Demons are depraved, but this just seems over the top. Not only is it just uncomfortable to a level that's no longer fun (because being disturbed by the enemies of the game can be kind of fun in a weird way, as well as instill the players with a definite reason to want to kill them beyond the plot), but it also seems like lazy storytelling. If the campaign is nothing but ridiculously disturbing content 24/7, then the party becomes inured to something that should be shocking.
If this was done by Paizo, I'm honestly surprised. In my past experience, they've been pretty good with these sorts of things. They've kept to either doing it subtly or only using it sparingly to effectively create a certain response in the players (*cough cough* Graul Family Homestead *cough*) without crossing the line. That leads me to think that my DM added much of it in, which makes sense because some of the stuff he's added in and told us were his creation are just...just comical in how graphic they are. Like Baphomet giving us a nightmare where he tells us "there is only rape". But then there's also stuff that are straight out of a Saturday Morning Cartoon, like a super powerful Demon conducting a choir of Dretches.
When I tell him of my complaints about these things he just sort of shrugs and tells me he can't do much about it. Are these complaints I should have about the campaign or about him as a DM? I really hope it's not the latter because this is the first campaign he's ever run (which wasn't a good idea if you ask me, since he's running it non-mythic, but that's another piece anyway). I don't want to be this upset with his style because it's obvious he's worked a lot on the campaign. Without spoiling the campaign, what can you tell me?

Bill Dunn |
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When I tell him of my complaints about these things he just sort of shrugs and tells me he can't do much about it. Are these complaints I should have about the campaign or about him as a DM? I really hope it's not the latter because this is the first campaign he's ever run (which wasn't a good idea if you ask me, since he's running it non-mythic, but that's another piece anyway). I don't want to be this upset with his style because it's obvious he's worked a lot on the campaign. Without spoiling the campaign, what can you tell me?
He can't do much about it? That just means he won't do much about it. Paizo doesn't send the GM Police around to ensure that GMs are following their adventures to the letter.
Of course, they also don't generally pack their adventures, even WotR, wall to wall with explicit depravity either. Based on my reading of the AP, your GM is embellishing the content. Significantly.

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I played in the path from 1 to 20 and there was nothing like this. Your DM may be injecting significant amounts of 'edge' to make supremely EVIL creatures seem more EVIL.
If it makes you super uncomfortable you might want to have a talk with them about how 'less can be more' when telling a story.

Desril |
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Yeah, that's pretty much entirely your GM's doing. Baphomet has, like, nil sexual content related to him. All the sex stuff is tied up with Nocticula and the Midnight Isles and even that's coy, just mentioning being able to "spend the night" or "find other ways to entertain".
If it was Nocticula's brother whose name I won't attempt to spell, then maybe, but he's not relevant to the AP. Paizo writes for PG-13, not R or X. That's not any different in Wrath of the Righteous.

The Black Bard |
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Ditto what the others have said. Paizo does a great job of implying how bad it is without spelling it out. There have been a few things here and there that got pretty dark, but those were generally Pre-Pathfinder, back in the Dungeon and Dragon magazine days. Looking at you, Scuttlecove, Porphyry House, Savage Tide.
After that, it just boils down to "audience preference". Your DM is just not on the same page, or possibly not willing to be, regarding content levels as you are.
Granted, I'm of the mind that the evil of demons and devils literally begins where mortal evil stops, as they are "pure" evil, untouched by good or even neutrality. Humans might consider an objective, and how it could be good, neutral, or evil, depending on how they go about it. The demon starts at evil and goes worse from there.
Depending on my group, I'll describe it, honestly, unflinchingly, gruesomely. Or I'll just say "You try not to look around, because what you see is just... bad. And the more you look, the worse it gets. And the part of you that's still human is screaming at the part of you that's willing to keep looking."
Its fine to not to want the lurid details. Tell your DM that, and decide where the deal-breaking line is if he doesn't respect it.

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I'd say there are some uncomfortable parts in Wrath, (a bit in book 6 comes to mind) but nothing as extreme as you describe. Even the part I mentioned parenthetically has a disclaimer advising the GM to omit it if the group won't enjoy it. Part of good GMing is knowing your players' comfort levels and sticking within them. The game is supposed to be fun, after all.
The city in the Midnight Isles is part of the realm of Nocticula, who does have evil sex stuff as part of her dominion. But the city is a sprawling lawless metropolis in the Abyss - all manner of atrocities happen there on a continuous basis, not just prostitution (which is not even innately evil IMO).
I've run this AP. It is not written as you describe.

FantheFlames |
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It sounds like your GM is doing a good job at making you feel uncomfortable. You're dealing with pure evil, so it shouldn't come as a total shock.
There's a difference between "making one feel uncomfortable" and "being so graphic and explicit it's causing active complaints." There's a pretty wide line in many situations.
This is especially true when a DM is actively changing the concepts of specific demons just to add more "evil" to a campaign. Baphomet is a demon lord of rage and destruction and as such has more than enough evil atrocities he could showcase in his portfolio, you don't need to change him. For someone to characterize him as saying "there is only rape" is absolutely ludicrous.
And even if the book was written in this manner, and had these ridiculous atrocities, the most important thing is player enjoyment. If someone is becoming vastly uncomfortable with the description of things in a AP, to the point of actively complaining, that is something that needs to be addressed, not just a shrug of the shoulders and "that's how it's written, there's nothing I can do."

Yossarin |
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Your GM is definitely providing his own spin. The original text in the AP barely even flirts with depravity, especially of a sexual nature. I echo others in saying that you should bring this up to your GM again, but perhaps in a stronger way, especially if it is making you uncomfortable. Pointing him in the direction of this thread might be helpful, because those of us here are not judging your GM (nor are you!), just pointing out that he is embellishing with his own content. Unfortunately, that embellishment is at the expense of your enjoyment.

Axial |

Gahhh, some of the things you're describing sound like the nastier scenes in Berserk. While I do love that manga/anime, it's pretty out there in terms of depicting things like torture, brutality, and rape. I find it pretty interesting that your GM took Baphomet (represented by Paizo as the demon lord of minotaurs, labyrinths, and secret societies) and turned him into something like Molag Bal from the Elder Scrolls, only way more blatant. I can't speak to what this GM's intentions are, whether he's using these brutal elements to help tell the story or if he's just inserting mindless shock value. From what you describe, it seems a bit like the latter, but I don't know.
I'll echo what the other players have said, and state that you should talk to the GM about it. Maybe he'll tone it down a bit or portray the demon cultist's sheer vileness, unrestrained sadism, and complete lack of morals in some other way rather then describing constant rape and torture.

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This is where I suggest the GM of this group (as well as his players) take a moment to read the section on consent on pages 190–191 of Horror Adventures.
(And as folks have mentioned several times, this is content that your GM is adding to the game—the fact that it's ruining the game for you is unfortunate and if your GM doesn't change his ways, my suggestion would be to drop out of the game, frankly. It's supposed to be a game, not trauma.)

wertyou2 |
It sounds like your GM is doing a good job at making you feel uncomfortable. You're dealing with pure evil, so it shouldn't come as a total shock.
I don't have a problem with feeling uncomfortable about the villains. Like I said, it emotionally charges the players to want to stop the villains for reasons beyond "they're evil and my character hates evil", and that makes it more interesting. The problem is both that my DM is going way too far to the point where it's no longer enjoyable, and even if I wasn't made uncomfortable it's just weak storytelling to me. In my opinion, sexual assault isn't something you need to delve too deeply into to make people suitably uncomfortable. A little hint here or there is more than enough to get the point across while still remaining effective and appropriate. Even the word "rape" in and of itself is uncomfortable; it cuts through the air and hits you right in the gut. When you go so deeply into it like my DM is, it goes from effective to an exploitation film. Add that to the fact that we've barely had any breaks from the content aside from random joke encounters like the aforementioned Dretch choir, and now what should be shocking is just dull and par for the course. You could arguably do something with that, looking at how the characters are becoming so disillusioned with the depravity of the Demon armies and how that affects their morality, but that's more of a party-wide thing than a GMing thing.
I'll echo what the other players have said, and state that you should talk to the GM about it. Maybe he'll tone it down a bit or portray the demon cultist's sheer vileness, unrestrained sadism, and complete lack of morals in some other way rather then describing constant rape and torture.
I've tried doing it before, and he says he's toned it down a bit, but I don't really buy it. By this point, he's not really willing to listen to any sort of advice or criticism. On some level, I can't really blame him. Our party is, as a whole, unhappy with him as a DM, so throughout the campaign, he's been getting a lot of flack from everyone (myself included). This has escalated in recent weeks, due to our general dislike of the labyrinth system. Now, he gets upset when anyone tries to make a suggestion to him, and I can't imagine me bringing up a problem that I've brought up in the past will go very well, even if I try to explain it from a storytelling perspective instead of an explantion of comfort levels.
This is where I suggest the GM of this group (as well as his players) take a moment to read the section on consent on pages 190–191 of Horror Adventures.
(And as folks have mentioned several times, this is content that your GM is adding to the game—the fact that it's ruining the game for you is unfortunate and if your GM doesn't change his ways, my suggestion would be to drop out of the game, frankly. It's supposed to be a game, not trauma.)
The funny thing is that I actually suggested to him to read it before the campaign started. He didn't listen.
I have juggled with the idea of ducking out for the last chapter and coming back when we play Iron Gods with a different GM, but I like everyone else in the party too much to do that. Even if I disagree with how the GM runs the game, I still more or less like him.

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due to our general dislike of the labyrinth system
Now I'm wondering if he's even running the labyrinth system correctly. Just FYI, the basic way it's supposed to go:
Group wanders through the maze for some period of time. There is a skill check with a fairly high DC. If you make it, choose where to go next. Otherwise, roll on a table and go to a random spot.
My group had a slayer who could make the skill checks on a 1 so they navigated the maze pretty easily, but we were using mythic which obviously helps.

Brother Fen |

Well if you've tried talking, offered suggestions and still feel uncomfortable, then drop out and find another game. Sometimes that's the only answer. It means doing without playing for a little bit, but you'll eventually find another game that is more to your liking. If you're looking for an answer beyond what you've been given so far, it is not forthcoming.

wertyou2 |
wertyou2 wrote:due to our general dislike of the labyrinth systemNow I'm wondering if he's even running the labyrinth system correctly. Just FYI, the basic way it's supposed to go:
Group wanders through the maze for some period of time. There is a skill check with a fairly high DC. If you make it, choose where to go next. Otherwise, roll on a table and go to a random spot.
My group had a slayer who could make the skill checks on a 1 so they navigated the maze pretty easily, but we were using mythic which obviously helps.
That's how he ran the system. The DCs were too high for us to beat, however, so we had to make a deal with Asmodeus to proceed. Now we're in the Ineluctable Prison, and it's been a lot of random wandering into rooms where we're always surprised no matter what we do because "it's an Abyssal Hell Maze, it's not supposed to be easy or fun."
We're not upset at him abut the labyrinth part. It's just putting us all in a bit of a crabby mood. That puts him in a crabby mood, and then there's a whole aura of negativity.

Haladir |
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Frankly, rape as a plot point that's there just to show how darned evil the bad guys are is a much-overused trope that's simultaneously demeaning, sexist, and boring. I don't tolerate a cavalier attitude toward sexual violence in any game I play.
And by the way... The demon lord most associated with rape would be Socothbenoth ("perversion, pride, and taboos"), not Baphomet.
Socothbenoth views all of creation as his personal arena of pleasure. His tastes, and those of his faithful, tend to run toward the violent and destructive.
...and that's as explicit as Paizo gets.
As for the comment, "it's not supposed to be easy or fun"...
Pathfinder is a game, and it is supposed to be fun. If the players aren't having fun, then the GM is doing it wrong.
I've been a player in this kind of situation before. I would recommend quitting this group and finding (or starting) another.

Kileanna |
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As a GM one must know where are the limits. Not everybody is equally sensitive and what one considers fun another one can think it's too much.
I've dealt with mature themes in my games before, and I always liked better to insinuate than to show, because I'd rather have my players imagine as much or as less as they please. But showing is not bad if everybody enjoys.
Know your public and adapt yourself, this GM clearly is not willing to do that.