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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4289383" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, some Half-Orcs are like Steely Dan's - the product of illicit love - and I've got nothing against that for a fantasy RPG (Half-Elves can easily be done the same way, as per Tolkien).But where the implied backstory is rape it has (at least to me, but not only to me) an unpleasantness that is different from that of human sacrifice. This is probably for a couple of reasons: rape is a real crime in the present day, whereas human sacrifice typically is not; rape in the game raises issues of the relationship between violence and sexuality which many gaming table would prefer not to engage in (sexuality on its own can be pretty hard to handle sensibly at the gaming table).Sure, the world's an ugly place. But I only want some of that in my game. And I don't think that D&D, played according to the rules as written - with its shining knights, alignments, unproblematic deployment of "just war" justifications for what might otherwise look like routine murder - is the game to really explore the issue. (I'm not saying we have to go all the way to "I Kill Puppies for Satan" to make it a legitimate topic for roleplaying - just that I don't think D&D is the game for it.)I don't think anyone suggested that it does. Sinecure didn't. And I didn't. And I don't think Mustrum Ridcully did. So as far as that is concerned, we're all on the same page.</blockquote>