In-Fiction Sexual Exploitation: blarrrrgh
JoyWriter:
I have never encountered that, thank goodness! I've played very occasionally with players who will put their concept before other players feelings, but we've generally been able to pull them back beforehand (out of character "hang on, pull back a bit"). And with most of my friends, if we have issues, we generally engineer a bust up out in the open, and only sit down to play together when we've chilled a bit.
More broadly, our games relation to sexuality has been awesome, and I hope it continues.
If I did come across this, I would say "stop this game a sec", trying to clearly demarcate that this was out of character player talk, and say that that was too far and offensive to me etc. I might agree to the thing happening if we were going to spend some time cleaning it up and dealing with it properly as an abuse of power. But if it was a really serious problem to me, and the other players weren't going to get involved in some kind of thematic reparations, then I'd have to "take my ball and go home", apologising to the GM for it and making my objections as explicit as possible. In my experience the faster and more honestly you say it (providing you can articulate it of course) the less you need to put emotion in, and the less someone will feel like they're loosing face.
If you just go streight in with it, the worst that I've seen is total blankness that leads to awkwardness, as people simply don't process what you had a problem with (hasn't happened in an rpg, but has happened in random social situations with joking going too far, in fact I think I've been on the receiving end of an unexpected objection before now).
I'd also like to leave open the possibility of future games, because that guy might have been regressing a bit, (old school friends etc) and might be willing to play a different way, assuming he didn't feel like he lost face (or maybe just thought about it and decided to change regardless). It might even be that without him changing there are worthwhile games you can play with this guy, within certain constraints.
My suspicion is that this is more likely to happen playing with strangers, as people who know you will already be pretty tuned up to your principles and attitudes, and you to theirs, so the sort of calibration that stops this stuff is more likely to have happened.
But then I only have a few years experience, so I can't give you any statistical answers!
greyorm:
James, honestly, you described the guy as playing a character who was "creepy" and apparently a little sexually obsessed with your character. I'm not seeing the problem, fictionally, with that character grabbing a chance to ogle some boobies. Your failure to say, "Whoa, guys, I'm very personally uncomfortable with this. Can we not do this?" is, for me, the big issue.
And the whole "Let's bash and armchair psychoanalyze some guy we don't know" nature of this thread so-far is just really wrong. Because in my group of male and female friends talk or behavior like this would be considered pretty fucking tame, inside or outside an RPG (or card game, or anything else). In social circles that are apparently not the social circles you guys hang out in, what Earwig did isn't necessarily "wrong" or "broken" behavior, and if you don't know that you're dealing with entirely different cultures of sexuality, then wires like this can get crossed.
So he and players not from your circle may not have considered this to be "nonsense" or "bullying" at all, and might not even have understood they were crossing one of your personal low-tolerance lines.
As an example, I play cards weekly with the same group and have been for a few years. "Your mom" jokes are regular and raunchy. So one day, I make a "your mom" crack towards another of the players, and he froze stock still and said, "Listen, I know all of you hate your mothers, but I love mine. Don't ever say anything about her again or I will hurt you."
There was this weird silence around the table, because what? And I pointed out, "Um, we don't all hate our moms. My mom is great (haha, don't say anything, guys) these are jokes." He responded, "I don't care. Don't ever say anything about my mom." So I shrugged it off and we know not to make those jokes towards him (even though I still personally consider his reaction fairly funny because it is completely bizarre from my perspective).
The point is, this is a guy our group has been playing cards with for two years, and somehow he went that whole time without being nailed by "your mom" until just that moment. No one else had any clue, and wouldn't and shouldn't have had any clue, that he thought that way, even though we weren't a bunch of new players sitting down together. Now, if he runs off to his friends elsewhere and they all badmouth us and psychoanalyze us as being sexist, nerdy anti-social mother-haters, bullies, or some nonsense or similar along the lines I'm seeing in this thread, it would be ridiculous.
There is an assumption that James' expectations and boundaries are the default and should have been clearly understood by everyone because they're just so OBVIOUS. And I'm saying "Not necessarily at all" and that it is disingenuous to think so, especially in a group where the members don't know each other well at all and so don't know what social or cultural climate one another are coming from and thus what each other's social boundaries and tolerances are.
And it isn't as though you can guess. You can't just say, "Oh, well, clearly HE should have JUST KNOWN that was RUDE!" Because maybe it is to you and your group, but maybe not to him and his. It may be that he would view your reaction as completely bizarre, thus it may not even have been considered.
Like going to a foreign country and being shut-out of the local social group for breaking some social taboo you didn't even know was a social taboo, and being told you should have JUST KNOWN not to say "thank you" to your mother-in-law because how rude and dismissive and hateful was that?
James has a thing about sexism in comics, and that got thrown in his face during play and pissed him off (because he viewed it as exploitation and harassment), but he didn't say anything about it. We can work on that, we can't go "Oh, that other guy not involved here whom we don't know what he was thinking, that guy was totally a wrong-thinking sexist dick, and how dare he, any right-thinking individual..."
Callan S.:
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Only good when leaving comfort zones? No. It can be good; it's often good. But not only good. We might be defining comfort zone differently.
Or defining good differently. Things might be mildly nice or amusing without leaving that zone...but that's like alot of feel good movies, ya know? But on the other hand maybe I stress leaving the CZ too much and should myself think about how staying inside it can be enjoyed.
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Really here, the rules on valid actions seem to have been left wide, wide open. We could look at how to patch that, here together. . . .But if we just look at it in terms of how he was a fucking fucked fuckwit, we just write it off that it's just about not playing with guys like him, and how the host should have done X...and the evolution of rules just does not happen.
Well, in this case, the rules patch would be a Line. Lines are basically social sanctions.
Yes, but the symantics of it are very important - the wording may be broad, which leads to a walking on eggshells/am I breaking a rule now non confident play. Also that comes with 'who judges the meaning of the words in the line we drew? And what not all members agree? What's our default? (good thread on that here)
Or if you tighten up the meaning of the words in the line, well then it becomes more specific and what about other instances that you want covered? And indeed what about stuff you don't realise you want covered, until it happens? That's a particularly interesting rules design challenge!
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It's just not a solution, I think, because we need a little bit of assholism (so to speak) to push us out of our comfort zones a little bit. How little a bit - well, it's up each designer - perhaps only a tiny amount.
Well, I guess what I saw in this game was a type of adolescent bullying - the equivalent of one player slapping or mocking another, or pouring beer on them during play, or grabbing and tearing up their character sheet in the midst of play. Not the end of the world! But qualitatively different than productively forcing the players to engage in a cathartic fictional process.
As a thought experiment: Paka told a story on Knife Fight one time when a fellow player punched him in the mouth over something that happened in-game. It certainly took Paka out of his comfort zone! But I would have a hard time saying that's remotely productive behavior, nor do I see how someone who can't help himself from punching a fellow player would be constrained by a rule.
I think the better thing is that at most gaming tables, "Don't punch someone in the mouth" should be an unspoken precondition to play. I would posit that "Don't sexually denigrate another player's character without some degree of assent from that player" is probably another unspoken precondition, at least around most gaming tables.
Gah, I didn't cover this properly, sorry to give the wrong impression. I'm not advocating playing with that guy but with new rules. I'm just advocating for people being able to push a little bit, within the limits of rules, or as you say, lines.
I think people can push a little bit, with a mutually constructive intent in mind. Those two things at the same time - your guy was only doing one of them, the pushing, and alot of it. I'm not trying to preserve what your guy in the account did, since he was only doing one.
I'm kind of in a tricky spot where in trying to preserve only part of what he did, I might sound like I'm advocating for him. I'm not, of course.
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"Don't punch someone in the mouth" should be an unspoken precondition to play.
Well, this is another design issue because trying to add conditions like this can go on forever AFAICT.
Personally I'd try and look at creating an arena or bubble, everything inside of which is a valid game move (and conversely, everything outside - which would include the punch to the face, is not a game move at all).
To me, having a 'don't punch' rule is more like making a picket fence or comb rather than arena or bubble - and while some stuff stops at the fence/comb, some stuff will get through the posts in the fence/teeth of the comb. It's not effective, to my mind. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm describing the understanding I'm working from.
Callan S.:
Quote from: greyorm on March 08, 2010, 02:57:20 PM
James, honestly, you described the guy as playing a character who was "creepy" and apparently a little sexually obsessed with your character. I'm not seeing the problem, fictionally, with that character grabbing a chance to ogle some boobies. Your failure to say, "Whoa, guys, I'm very personally uncomfortable with this. Can we not do this?" is, for me, the big issue.
I'll pitch a dissenting view to think on that, no, it isn't his 'failure'. Such an idea suggests there was a structure in place that he'd agreed to that he should say he's uncomfortable but failed to. And you don't want to say he should just know this structure.
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And the whole "Let's bash and armchair psychoanalyze some guy we don't know" nature of this thread so-far is just really wrong. Because in my group of male and female friends talk or behavior like this would be considered pretty fucking tame, inside or outside an RPG (or card game, or anything else). In social circles that are apparently not the social circles you guys hang out in, what Earwig did isn't necessarily "wrong" or "broken" behavior, and if you don't know that you're dealing with entirely different cultures of sexuality, then wires like this can get crossed.
Some people roleplay rape - they get quite physical, perhaps even leave bruises, but at its core it's actually very consensual. And some people might touch their coworkers breasts at a drunken office party - does the tameness of that breast touch relative to the activities of a roleplayed rape make it tame and okay? (I'm assuming here your group is actually at it's heard, consensual about all your 'wild' stuff). The relative tameness of the physical actions is irrelevant.
In some chess accounts I've heard the other guy would say quite unpleasant things and make annoying noises, but make valid game moves.
And I've heard of 'street chess' where your supposed to say unpleasant things to the other guy to put him off his game.
In the latter, it's consensual - well, assuming the other guy knew in advance it was like that and went 'Hey, I'm up for that!'. It might seem the same and thus validate the first case - that it seems the same is a mistaken perception.
Something for other readers to consider as well.
contracycle:
Seems really simple to me. You just bumped into a little pockert of mutually reinforcing misogyny. Nothing really special there, happens all the time, this years Superbowl commercials demonstrate that it's still cool and fashionbable to treat women as second class citizens. They didn't think you'd be "offended", probably because their own social circle reinforced their views, and if they acknowledged any objection at all it would be as "political correctness". In fact, if they did think you would be offended, they would probably have done it anyway, out of spite.
In this Raven is both right and wrong. Right inasmuch, it is a local culture, and expectations are not universal, and wrong because this behaviour is quite correctly sexist bullying and "local culture" doesn't excuse that, any more than it excuses any bigotry.
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