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Message: <blockquote data-quote="bramadan" data-source="post: 870834" data-attributes="member: 1064">Where do I draw the line ? In terms of the moral outrage, I have yet to feel it with regard to the game or gaming situation (real life moral outrage ofcourse, my characters and NPC are plenty outraged when appropriate). In terms of gratuity I draw it very strictly. I hate sex because of sex in gaming and literature but hate it less then dragons because of dragons (it is a fantasy book OFCOURSE we have to have dragons) or any other element that is introduced without regard to its place in the greater whole. In that vein I find the whole situation (which seems to be quite common) where party barbarian (or whomever) goes of to have sex with the tavern wench in an inn to which party never intends to return pointless, but pointless in a same way as if the party mage insisted on roleplaying his visit to the art galery in the big city that has equaly no plot significance. All that said, sex (and violence, and torture, and child abuse and most of the other above mentioned) that has a place in the plot is more then welcomed in my campaigns. Sex has been used as a tool for social manipuation as well as for its own sake since the dawn of humankind. It has been at heart, or close to it, of the most of the "real life" occult practices and most importantly it has been a probably the most important element of human narative, even the traditional epic narative that gaming draws uppon. Think about it; at the most crude, and with the right players ofcourse; but is your crusade against the orcs going to be more or less well played if you are sent of by the temple of Pelor or if you begin the first session with the players as the group of teens hidden by the stroke of good (?) luck watching as the raiding ork chieftain and his lieutenants torture their peers, then rape and murder their mothers and then rape and enslave their (younger ?) sisters. I do not say it works for everybody but with the right group it can provide the sort of intensity that turns an otherwise mundane green-bashing campaign into something worth the label of epic. My present campaign, I like to think, is nothing as crude as what is described above but it has somehow managed to contain an example of every thing from your list except for Necrofilia and Bestiality, not because I have something particularly against those two but rather because they are both, essentialy, forms of mastrubation and thus short on interaction which is necessary for any form of plot advancement.In short, one of the PCs in my party is a courtesan, she is a female PC played by a female player and her choice of class was influenced by the venice-like nature of the setting. Sexual manipualtion is her trade, her class abilities are based on it. Her seducing, "convincing", provoking or exhausting the NPCs are as important to the party sucess as fighter's gutting them open, and are given no less "on screen" time and (hopefully, though my efforts are slim compared to those of the writters of so many books) no less game-mechanical considerations. Simmilarly, the party has been given a glimpse of the vast underground (figuratively speaking) slave trade cartel that underfunds much of the prosperity of their city. For a number of  sessions they have been systematicaly exposed to seeing (and for a brief stint experiencing) the depravity which was no less surreal for being extensively based on the real life sources on the venetian-arab slave trade in the 1300's, with rape (of both sexes), torture and mutilation being rutinely used for maintaing the control over the slaves and even as moral boosting and "implicating" mechanism for the crew. All of this was given, less in order to motivate the party to develop the gut-hatered of the slavers (even though that was an expected and salutory bonus) but more to explain motivations (later revealed) of one of the campaign's main villains who has sold his soul to the devil in order to gain ecclesiestical power with which to combat the slavery he experienced first hand as a youth. Finaly, I want to adress the whole issue of "I would never do this in my game because i have experienced it first/second/third hand myself". I understand that this is a valid position to take and do not wish to imply that anybody is in wrong for adopting it. What I do not like is the unspoken part of the message that reads "...and if you only did neither would you." To couter this implication (if it is indeed present) let me note in a way of disclaimer that I am originaly from Bosnia and know a number of people who have been wounded or killed (not to mention worse things of which I fortunately have no first or second but plenty of third hand accounts) in our little altercration there, and am aware (and have felt a portion) of immense suffering such a fratricide can bring. If I were, though, because of that to rid my games of all warlords, hate mongers, ethnic clensers, "rapists for a cause" and religious bigots, I could not but think that my games would be poorer for it.</blockquote>

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