Things that just ARE plain taboo, as far as RPGs are concerned
Grinning Moon:
Okay. So there's a review of a game at RPG.net that just... bugs me (not the review or reviewer - the game being reviewed):
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13640.phtml
Okay, okay - maybe there's one part of the review that also sours my grapes a bit:
Quote
I don't believe that any particular subject in RPGs should be avoided out of hand...
Man, I just so absolutely disagree. In this case especially.
Erotic fiction, pornographic websites / magazines, hentai; it all serves one sole purpose, and I'm sorry if the frank truth here is offensive, but that purpose it to provoke or otherwise provide a causal outlet for masturbation. Do I have a problem with someone using said materials to masturbate? Nope. But this purpose is utterly defeated when the product is meant to be used in a social setting (...Well, the kind an actual role-playing game is meant to address, anyway. I suppose you could use for bizarre bedroom utility and pretend that it's the same idea).
I don't get why there's this notion among most RPG fans and designers that there is just no such thing as 'inappropriate' within our medium. I mean, I'm not a fan of censorship, but I also think there's a nice, solid line between doing something without censoring yourself and creating something that is just outright disgusting.
I haven't personally read Black Tokyo, so maybe it's more tame and has better merit as a product than the review suggests, but my money would be on that it belongs lumped into the afore-mentioned category.
...What do you guys think? Am I just way out of line to suggest something like this?
Eero Tuovinen:
You're probably a bit outside the purview of the First Thoughts subforum here, assuming that you're just looking for a vigorous discourse on rpg censorship. It's all good to me, though, as the topic certainly lends itself to game design. I might actually tell a bit about a game I have in my development files that would be rather pertinent for this; do you have some game design thoughts yourself about the topic, or did you just want to vent? I wouldn't want to capture the thread if you have some substance in mind here, but if not, then I wouldn't mind seeing what you'd think about my game Blindfold Tryst, the game of mutual masturbation, in light of your comments on Black Tokyo.
(This is exactly the kind of time when I'd like to have my own subforum here, just so I could invite the discussion there. The Forge is a very purposeful site with little room for random chatting; the generic cultural discourse usually takes place on publisher subforums, with each specializing in their own slice of cultural questions.)
As for the cultural topic you took up, I'd be interested to hear why you interpret the situation in terms of roleplaying culture. I've never noticed that absolute libertinism were a special quality of roleplaying culture apart from the cultural mainstream; if anything, I'd say that roleplayers include a sizable population of folks who censor their play much more stridently than they do with other medias they consume; especially American rpg discourse seems to react to potentially touchy topics with much more moral panic than we see nowadays attached to anything else, except perhaps computer games. And in that case it's not even the practitioners of the form who encourage that panic, so I might well say that roleplaying as a medium is perhaps the most conservative one I know of.
Finally, as a reading recommendation: the Sex & Sorcery supplement for Sorcerer is my go-to manual for how to deal with touchy subjects like violence, sex and politics in roleplaying. The terminology of lines and veils from the book has served me pretty well in understanding and managing "dangerous" content in my gaming during the last couple of years. The core stance of that book, shared my yours truly, is that there are no inappropriate topics per se, there are only inappropriate ways of handling them and inappropriate people to share them with. Roleplaying, like all art, is a form of communication, and we are hardly in position to utter for now and forever a final judgement over what people might wish to discourse upon in their private chambers. This utterly amoral and practical approach to art censorship works for me: worry about what you want and what your co-players want, not what others might be doing with their own friends.
But before we get any deeper into this it's imperative to figure what kind of thread this is and whether it should be on this forum in the first place!
Velcanthus:
Quote from: Grinning Moon link=topic=25819.msg#msg date=
...What do you guys think? Am I just way out of line to suggest something like this?
I simply do not care how other people role play, so long as they don't do it on the street and frighten the horses.
I do not care to speculate whether or not they do it to masturbate. If they did, I can't see why I would care, unless they were doing it in traffic. Or, perhaps, in charge of heavy equipment.
For the life of me, I cannot see what would make anyone want to masturbate over this, but there are 6 billions of us, so I suppose there'll be someone.
whoknowswhynot:
I'm in agreement with Grinning moon...Society needs to draw a line somewhere and that should include sexuality. I'm not a prude, but as you have seen (I'm sure) some people take sexuality too far and hurt others because of their needs. We should not encourage this type of behavior but rather heal it. Censorship sucks, not only because of what it actually is, but also because it only concentrates the object of censorship and strengthens it. Why do we fight for the freedom to buy pornography and say dirty words, but care nothing about the freedom to go in a public place without being watched or have a cell phone conversation without being listened to...We SHOULD censor ourselves every day. It's called self control and cool people do it! It's better than Big Brother doing it for us.
The pdf in reference actually sounds a little odd but interesting to me because of my years playing Call of Cthulhu. I think i would not want to buy it because of the artwork...I used to draw my own Hentai when I was 12 or so :-)
JohnG:
As we've already determined this is not a new concept and I think that all aspects of life should be open to inclusion in a roleplaying game. However in all things we must maintain a certain sense of decorum as far as our actual products go, let us not forget how many young kids pick up Dungeons and Dragons and may just as easily spot something like this online. It is not our job to be parents but it's also not wise to paint a shirt that says "target me for being a perv and corrupting kids!". In this regard I think that within a game the idea of having these mechanics may add some depth depending on the kind of game and how relevant certain adult topics may be. However unless it's important to the game in some way it's really better to let each group determine how much X they want in the RPG, one or all 3.
A hentai RPG where the entire focus is sexuality, that my friend is a bit much in my opinion and could be quite boring for that matter, but an RPG with mature themes that may involve sexuality, that I can tolerate and welcome. For example I never once give a method for rolling stamina to make sure you don't finish before your partner but I have a listing of prices for brothel girls and prostitutes as they are relevant to the world and are certainly something that would be encountered. No one has to use those themes but if we're simulating lives here I doubt everyone's celibate in Generic Fantasy World #3 or Modern Gothic Horror Setting # 5.
I have a friend who was in a game once that had an excellent GM and storyline, (yes this really was a friend so no commentary :-p), the game was going great until the GM had a character raped in the game. The character consented and this could have been a very dramatic and involving aspect of the story, instead the game exploded and people were outraged about the whole thing because it just went too far for them. Needless to say game ended, and group actually broke up entirely, from a design standpoint I believe sex is just too touchy a subject to be taken beyond certain levels in gaming and hardly worth the effort in most cases.
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