In-Fiction Sexual Exploitation: blarrrrgh
James_Nostack:
Quoting from Callan
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How were you playing/what was the social contract you were aware of? Was it don't make a move if it upsets someone, or retract it if it did? Or playing like chess, where if it's a valid move but the other person doesn't like it, tough titty for them? . . . It's kind of funny how they are probably doing it 'because it's just a game/pretend', but do they target an NPC? No, it has to be something to do with a real life player. Ie, something non game/not pretend. I guess my point is, I've stopped games over shit like this - but if the 'move' is within the zone of valid game moves, then it was actually me being disruptive to the game. Which I'd do again - but I'd still be being disruptive.
(emphasis added)
I dunno, Callan. That makes zero sense to me. "Hi, I know you're playing a chick character. Therefore, although I wouldn't do this to a female NPC I'm going to try to sexually humiliate your character as a way of being a dick to you personally. Oh, and if you object, it's you who's being disruptive." Surely I'm misunderstanding something?
(I should explain that this wasn't some sort of cathartic Narrativist psycho-drama where pushing people's issues is expected and encouraged. This was, "Hey, Teen Titans!")
Yes, in hindsight we should have explicitly discussed Lines before play. Frankly, playing an early-80's super heroes game, I figured not denigrating another player's character sexually went with the genre, and that there are some things you don't do when gaming with someone for the first time. In other words, I assumed this sort of asinine teenager shit was a default Line unless explicitly or implicitly waived.
But I can also see that a type of player prone to this behavior might have felt it was implicitly waived:
1. In the very first scene, the GM offered us a choice between foiling a bank robbery (my vote) or stopping a super-villainous rampage (votes of the other players). The psychic's player jokingly said, "I mind-control her into voting with us!" and I said, "Okay, let's roll for it!" (rubbing my hands a little bit of light blood opera, which is always part of the super hero team comic). Naturally the psychic won, which at the time was acceptable. But this set the precedent for mind-controlling my character.
2. During combat, the GM offhandedly mentioned that one civilian accidentally killed another, in a way that we didn't expect and couldn't do anything about. Accidental death occurs in Bronze Age supers comics, but it's rare and never something to shrug off. Someone observed a little sadly, "I guess this game is going there [meaning Dark Age comics]." And that's when the Earwig character really began to get annoying.
Taken in combination, I can understand why an asshole player would think, "Oh, okay, perhaps it's permissible to sexually humilate James's character now."
Except, y'know, fuck you for wanting to do that in the first place.
Callan S.:
I dunno. I could describe alot of moral structures, structures which I think make sense and match up with human needs. But those structures would be made up. They wouldn't really be evidence of anything.
I just think alot of gamers have been burnt like this, and the way they react teaches them to think that it's alright and normal play to stomp on someone for making a valid game move. And also no one makes rules to fix this because people have learned the habit of always leaving it up to this social sanction level of handling.
It's just that guys like this seem to fuck up other people sticking to rules even if they get uncomfortable/leave their comfort zone a little, because of the time they stuck to the rules and just got burnt.
When play is only good when we leave our comfort zone a little. Would you say that as well?
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.
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.
Anyway, my position rests on the ideas that being pushed out of our comfort zone a little bit is what makes gameplay fun and that we need a little bit of someone having the capacity to do slightly uncomfortable things, for that comfort zone shift to happen. I may be wrong in those two ideas. Certainly in gamist board games it's clear cut - no one like losing - it pushes you out of your comfort zone - yet that is exactly what gives gameplay it's zing (or a large part of it's zing, atleast). So I'll leave that as evidence, even if it is about gamism and boardgames :)
James_Nostack:
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When play is only good when we leave our comfort zone a little. Would you say that as well?
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.
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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.
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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.
FetusCommander:
Punching a player in the mouth is a little different from psychically manipulating someone's character in-game.
I can see it made you uncomfortable, but from a play perspective, I'd ask: was that something in the "realm" of that psychic guy's character? From his background, it sounds not like he was being "juvenile," but that he was remaining well within character, even if the act he did was out of character offensive to you out of game (which you admitted may not have been communicated).
Were you more upset with The Beholder, who actually did the act, or The Earwig? It sounds like Earwig was doing some obvious telegraphing of out of character intent, so I could see you being miffed at that, but the psychic seems like he was acting in a way his character would- his character being "a D&D-obsessed teenage nerd who got mind-control/hallucination powers" using the moniker of a popular monster known for psychic slavery.
I've seen this type of thing in my playgroup, but it's never gotten to the point with our group where people were really offended. Usually, the things that really offend people are the type of metagaming you mentioned, where player intent and character intent are sorta blurred. It's usually the fact that someone feels "boxed in" that leads to upset though, and to me, this situation seems similar. Your character had little option but to lose, since Beholder's numerical scores made winning very difficult. Would you have felt as upset if you had the mechanical option to toggle out of it? I ask that, even knowing that you've admitted this is a personal issue.
The fact that he was egged on by another player "out of game," along with the fact that the system didn't provide much out (never played Champions, but from the way you described it, it sounds that way), would piss me off in that situation. I wouldn't be bothered by the act of in-character sexual abuse myself.
I'm not the type of player who does things that overt, but I am the type of player, and GM, who likes to push comfort zones, even with random strangers. The appeal for me is usually folding those people into the group (I have one of those "fucked shit" groups), but if they withdraw in an obviously out of character way, I'll back off. If someone were to say, for example, "I don't really want to play around with stuff like that," then I won't.
The way I play is more about desensitizing, and less about violating personal authority with game mechanics, since I know that's a slippery slope. I'd be more likely to play a villain who has rape as a central part of their backstory (I have a few characters who are rape victims, and that plays some role in how they operate), than I would be to force a pass/fail violation scenario on someone else. The mechanics of most RPGs are such that doing that as a player, or especially facilitating that as a GM always seems like a personal attack.
James_Nostack:
Quote from: FetusCommander on March 08, 2010, 09:45:24 AM
Punching a player in the mouth is a little different from psychically manipulating someone's character in-game.
In general, sure. But I'm using the thought experiment to show that I think Callan left out an important ingredient: you have to get players' implied consent to make them uncomfortable. Virtually nobody gives consent to being punched. And I don't really see how choosing to play a female character [played in a manner identical to any generic male character] gave consent to fictional-level harassment.
I should stress that this wasn't a "generally fucked shit" type of game, where it turns out Player X is having sexual relations with Player Y's aborted twin, while Player Z engages in cannibalism as a reenactment of the Last Supper. (I'm totally down with sexual harassment in that context.)
But this context was: plain vanilla super hero game + plain vanilla super hero scenario + "let's sexually harass James's character." The only fucked-up shit was centered around my character's breasts. Which gave everything a (faint) air of specific, interpersonal bullying.
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Were you more upset with The Beholder, who actually did the act, or The Earwig?
The psychic guy didn't bother me that much. I thought it was kinda dumb, but, hey--psychic guy. He wouldn't have done anything without the other player egging him on.
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Would you have felt as upset if you had the mechanical option to toggle out of it? I ask that, even knowing that you've admitted this is a personal issue.
Maybe? I'm not sure what a "mechanical option to toggle out" means. Like, I think this whole thing could have been avoided if I just said, explicitly and OOC, "Dude, WTF are you doing, and WTF does this have to do with 80's comics? Knock it off." If a rule could do that, great, problem solved.
I didn't feel annoyed that "by the rules" this character was permitted to do this, because there's no fiction other than what the real people create. I felt annoyed that the act of making a largely arbitrary choice about character gender invited me specifically into this sort of nonsense.
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