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

mrm1138 · Jun 5, 2019

dco said:
Have you seen the news? Obviously you are wrong.

To which news are you referring, and how does it demonstrate that I am "obviously" wrong?

And sanitized for what? Perhaps someone is distressed by violence, torture, etc.

I was quoting you (hence the quotation marks), so it's whatever you consider to be sanitized.

Ralif Redhammer · Jun 5, 2019

Somehow, this whole incident just gets more and more sordid.

dragoner said:
Yes, he wrote "In Defense Of Rape", so that his coming to their defense is but damning with faint praise.

Immortal Sun said:
HAHAHAHAA wow people are actually defending this? God damn the internet is so predictable. JFC

Morrus · Jun 5, 2019

dco said:
Those players should not play rpgs with people they don't know.

While I am aware that blaming the victim is common in certain segments these days, we’re not going to do it here. Don’t post again in this thread, please.

MrDM69 · Jun 5, 2019

I think that you should make sure everybody at or around the table is okay with something like this (or just the people at the table and keep the game quiet) before you do it.

Immortal Sun · Jun 6, 2019

Ralif Redhammer said:
Somehow, this whole incident just gets more and more sordid.

Sadly, the more people look into these incidents, the deeper the rabbit hole tends to go. First it's "we found a history..." then it's "oh and he's done worse things..." followed by "some of the folks who defend him are also involved..."

I'm sure some folks would like to pretend these are "lone wolves" or "disturbed individuals" but the reality is there's a trend and the trend is highly concerning.

Man in the Funny Hat · Jun 6, 2019

Anyone who makes policy or takes punitive action without fact-checking things, or basing decisions on social media rumors and the mere existence of accusations, etc. is not helping themselves nor anyone else. The way to deal with any such event as the OP is the same as it always has been: Verify what actually happened to the best of your abilities; take appropriate action based on that; tell social media and rumormongers to take a hike. And then if you want to make a policy about such things just be sure you have means and the will to enforce it, or again, you're not helping anyone.

Geez, I'd have thought it was S.O.P. to have any DM of any game at any con of reasonable size sign some form that spells out what kind of subject matter is okay or not okay. Don't introduce questionable material if you're a DM, don't permit it being introduced by players at your table. If you have no such policy in place then slap yourselves on the wrist and PUT IT in place. If anyone was out of line, official policy or no, take appropriate action and move onward and upward. If someone wants to run a dark, deviant, questionable, or downright offensive anything at your con you don't have to let them (unless if that's the whole point of your con?) and if you do it's your own flippin fault if people take issue with it.

This isn't hard to figure out. When people do offensive things just kick them out and tell them not to come back. If an incident is blown out of proportion then blow it back into proportion. It's not magic. Just be decent, reasonable humans - both to avoid causing problems and to solve them when they arise. Is practical decency really so far gone that people don't just grok this by reflex?

Mistwell · Jun 6, 2019

I am curious what people thought of the interview with the GM and his explanation for what happened?

Riley37 · Jun 6, 2019

MGibster said:
A safe place isn't just a place where people are polite to one another and treat each other with respect. It's a designated area where, among other things, people won't have to be exposed to ideas they find upsetting, disagreeable, or challenging. I can't promise a safe space if I'm running a con in a public venue.

That said, of course I'm not not going to spring sexual assault on my player characters. Just because my game isn't a safe space doesn't mean anything goes. There are a lot of things I'm not going to work into a convention game precisely because the venue is public and there's an excellent change I won't know any of the players.

There's more or less a spectrum with Care Bears on one end, and Watchmen towards the other end. The schedule or program of events lists games with blurbs which often indicate where each game falls on that scale. At a recent con I played "Fall of Magic"; at the beginning, the GM noted that player choices could tilt the game towards humor or towards bleak (or towards bleak humor), and asked the players to say how far towards grim we were willing to go. It's a bit like restaurants asking whether to prepare a dish with mild, medium, or hot spicing. Those are three valid options. Kevin Rolfe's game at UK Expo went beyond "hot"; perhaps the Scoville Scale analogy for what he did is "pepper spray directly to the eyes".

Can I be exposed to ideas which are challenging, without being exposed to "you wake up handcuffed to each other in the back of a van"?

Riley37 · Jun 6, 2019

dco said:
I've seen far worse things than rape, like being tortured to death, mutated, killed, sacrificed, dismembered, eaten alive...

“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate." - Roy Batty

Here's the thing, though. I doubt that any of the players in that game at UK Expo had, in their previous experience, been tortured to death, mutated, killed, sacrificed, dismembered, or eaten alive. It's even possible that none of them had ever known anyone who's been tortured to death, mutated, killed, sacrificed, dismembered, or eaten alive. Those are events which are more common in the fantasy genre, than in real life in the First World (with shades of grey on "killed", as death-by-homicide rates vary and war veterans may have killed people and/or seen people killed).

It's possible that one or more of the players have survived rape. It's darn near certain that at least one of the players knows someone (male, female or otherwise) who's been raped. Not all men hear the stories; not unless they're clearly the kind of man who will listen, without mocking, blaming, shaming or denigrating the survivor; but if you know ten women, then you probably know someone who's been raped.

So you're lumping apples with oranges.

billd91 · Jun 6, 2019

Mistwell said:
I am curious what people thought of the interview with the GM and his explanation for what happened?

Smells fishy to me. If the GM was going for an Inbetweeners kind of vibe in which the PCs start in a compromising position and hijinks ensue, he didn't get off to a good start. My guess, even if he did intend for the PCs to have sore asses because of the squirts, he probably just described them waking up naked in a van with sore asses and left it to the players to infer what that signified. I wouldn't be surprised if he did so deliberately knowing that players might interpret it as being anally raped. While a show like the Inbetweeners might be able to play some of that off with humor (particularly around a character like Jay), it isn't going to work for your average con game. And obviously so.