Players 'distressed' by gang-rape role-playing game

jasper said:

Doh. I saying it is worst now.

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You're saying that a dozen posts which get Kevin Rolfe's name wrong, are worse than the Hollywood blacklists resulting from McCarthy's Red Scare?

That's a bold, unconventional position. We might even call it... edgy.

Interview with one of the players here.

Player's description of what happened:

Well, the incident happened about 3/4 of the way through the game. Not at the beginning. We had had a good 2 hours of being silly and fun and getting to know our characters and the others at the table. We were joking and laughing then the GM told us we blacked out, had awoken in the a dark van naked and handcuffed to each other. He told us our arses were sore because we had been raped for many many hours. Then he introduced our rapists, who weren’t even part of the story (not that that would have made it better or anything). They then told us they wanted to see us run, that they would give us 10 mins before catching up to us and raping us again and again. If not they would shoot us in the head. So would we prefer being murdered or raped?

After that he told us he enjoyed seeing the shocked looks on all our faces. That was why he did it.

The game was set as 18+ the premise was that we were meant to be “Essex Boys” in the 90s out on a holiday in Ibiza and things were going to “get messy”. Now, I grew up in the 90s in Essex and went to school with the boys the game synopsis was referring to. When we would say “things are going to get messy” we meant someone would drink too much and wander off into trouble. That’s what we took it to mean when we signed up. The game is about robots and science mysteries. We thought maybe some Austin Powers Fem-bot types would try to seduce us etc… There were absolutely no warns that he was about to turn the tables on us and do what he did.

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5ekyu said:

No, we have 12 uses of the wrong name. There is nothing so far that sts they named other GMs. It could have been typos, incomplete names or anything.

This conclusion seemed driven by agenda not derived from what was said.

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hhahahhha Swung and a miss. Strike three. Boy I say Boy You are way out in the tall grass with that conclusion.

jasper said:

hhahahhha Swung and a miss. Strike three. Boy I say Boy You are way out in the tall grass with that conclusion.

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Oh well.

jasper said:

hhahahhha Swung and a miss. Strike three. Boy I say Boy You are way out in the tall grass with that conclusion.

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We're going to need you to show more respect for the other posters in the thread, even if you disagree with them.

If you find you can't do that, please stop posting in the thread.

And in case anyone might forget - this goes for everyone. Treat each other well, or please walk away until you can.

Hrm, so, exactly how much evidence is needed here? We have one of the players directly contradicting the GM's story. The Con says that it investigated and found evidence of wrong doing as well as evidence that a game company might have had a hand in what was going on in order to drive publicity for their game.

So, at what point is is acceptable for cons to say, "Hey, we don't want this guy running games at our cons?" At what point is this not just "internet rage" and actually becomes something actionable?

It's funny in a not ha ha way that every time these sorts of things come up, whether it's sexual harassment or whatnot, there's been a pretty strong body of evidence of wrong doing (up to including admissions of wrong doing) but there always seems to be a branch of the fandom who will forgive anything, sweep anything under the carpet, all in the name of "protecting the innocent". It's baffling to me how many hoops folks are willing to jump through before they'll admit that from time to time at least, people do bad things and it's acceptable for the broader society to censure that member.

What if the DM was being mind-controlled by an insidious yet unnamed regime for the purposes of sowing dissent for political reasons?

Or what if the the DM wasn’t who we think it was, but his hitherto unknown evil twin, trying to discredit his brother as part of a scheme to inherit all of their mysterious father’s wealth?

I mean, really, ALL possibilities should be fully investigated before accepting the victims’ testimony.

billd91 said:

Simple - it denies the potential for rehabilitation.

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It's not true rehabilitation when it comes with a sense of entitlement.

Sometimes the price of crummy behavior is that there are consequences for bad behavior - like having to earn back trust over time. Or even people choosing to decide they don't want to risk being on the receiving end of that crummy behavior again.

As long as we're talking about things that piss us off, I'm very, very tired of the Geek Social Fallacy terror of exclusion and the child-bully's "geez, I said I was sorry, okay?!" being substituted for people owning their screw-ups and genuinely trying to earn back trust somewhere other than on the backs of the people they hurt.

There are people I've been a jerk to over the course of my life who've forgiven me, and that's great. There are other people who have decided that there are about seven billion other people in the world and they don't need to spend time with me, necessarily. And that's their right. Being not-a-jerk is something I'm supposed to do on my own, not because other people owe me forgiveness or because some people get into outrage-mob posting on Tumblr.

mythago said:

I'm very, very tired of the Geek Social Fallacy terror of exclusion and the child-bully's "geez, I said I was sorry, okay?!" being substituted for people owning their screw-ups and genuinely trying to earn back trust somewhere other than on the backs of the people they hurt.

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Thank you for mentioning the Geek Social Fallacy terror of exclusion. You beat me to it! For those who'd like a full explanation of the concept, try this link: http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html

There are some posts which examine the interaction of the GSF, with the "missing stair" concept - that is, the analogy between "oh, there's a missing stair on the back staircase, you just need to step over it" versus "oh, Bob doesn't respect personal boundaries, so you just need to work around that when you're talking with Bob". The literal missing stair, and Bob, are both especially hazardous to people who didn't get the memo. Newcomers show up, they go to the back staircase for a smoke break (or just a fresh air break), and that's where Bob tends to buttonhole newcomers... it's odd, how often Bob's conversations with young female newcomers, happen on those stairs, without anyone else around to corroborate either side of the resulting "he said, she said" dispute.

A passage from one of those pieces:
"On top of this, our good friend recently pointed out a Missing Stair in this friendgroup. Missing Stair has made a few people uncomfortable, and, who knows, may be driving away others. But we just know a couple of anecdotes, and while Partner admits Missing Stair is a jerk, he doesn’t know where he should draw the line. Because inclusivity. And Missing Stair hasn’t done anything egregious and maybe a few people just don’t like him. Partner isn’t comfortable disinviting _anyone_, much less this specific Missing Stair, because he knows how it feels to be uninvited and it’s evil and horrible."

IMO booting Bob from parties, and booting Kevin Rolfe from running games at UK Expo, are unpleasant, but they are a far lesser evil, a necessary evil, compared to the alternative: keeping Bob on your party invitation list, and keeping Kevin Rolfe on your GM list, *knowing the consequences to others, and especially the consequences for newcomers*. Particularly for newcomers with a reasonable concern about how welcome they are, and how easily they could lose their welcome by "rocking the boat". (If you think I'm referring to venues with an good long-term track record of welcoming straight white men, and a mixed record at welcoming anyone else - then yes, you're right, I am; but that's a point which goes beyond the assertions of GSF article and beyond the assertions of the original Missing Stair article by Cliff Pervocracy.)

Hussar said:

there always seems to be a branch of the fandom who will forgive anything, sweep anything under the carpet, all in the name of "protecting the innocent". It's baffling to me how many hoops folks are willing to jump through before they'll admit that from time to time at least, people do bad things and it's acceptable for the broader society to censure that member.

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IMO these are closely related points. I speculate - without concrete evidence - that those who jump most eagerly to Rolfe's defense, are circling the wagons, to protect someone they see as "one of their own", to prevent the precedent of *anyone* in TRPG (or comic fandom, or computer gaming) ever holding *anyone* accountable for any unpleasant behavior which falls short of actual criminal offense.

I am friends with a known missing stair...and I have to say, I haven’t seen him in more than a year, at least in part because I’ve finally gotten fed up with his behaviors. I’bpve been around a lot of jerks, some of whom are quite charming and worth the effort to associate with. Especially when you get past their Wall of Jerk.

My friend? Not as much as I once believed. The first time I noticed it fully was when his own younger brother kicked him off of our bowling team. It snowballed from there over the years.

I know he can be a good human. I’ve seen his empathic side up close. But it comes in very small doses.