How disturbing are your games?

[Percivellian]

First of all, very entertaining thread. Lots of good ideas to spice up roleplaying involvement.

Our usual DM ran a real great Westgate one time. The 'horror' and depravity was more implied and atmospheric, but definitely had all of our skins crawling, particularly my half-celestial paladin's. When really bad things are going down all around you (drugs, drug trade, slave trade, murder, theft, etc.) all in the same location, (a very cool location: a Westgate 'yacht party' with dozens of vessels interlinked in the harbor) and there's nothing you can do about it, lest you get everyone you're with killed, it sends shivers down your spine. We also had our first very successful 'sewer crawl' in that campaign, which was so well described, we often made decisions based on how a particular room made us feel. I remember a large stone door shifting open slowly to reveal a very dark room with the faint image of a skull swinging creepily (swinging? Ack!) on a large meat-hook in the middle. We went the other way

Good times.

 

[devilbat]

Generally, my games aren't that dark. There will be an exception here and there, but for the most part, pretty happy. I know that will soon change, as the LE fighter of the party has decided that her campaign goal will be to turn the paladin to the proverbial dark side. I see bad things ahead.

 

[Vexed]

Depends, like some others my game also deals with rape, drug abuse, extortion, murder, slavery, demonic possesion. If it fits in with a good story line and actually gets a good reaction from my players, disturbing is fine. I (my group) prefers an adult setting. (that doesnt mean a bunch of sicksh$t = adult setting)
There isn't a "shock value" I go for. I do not try to think up or encourage "gross" or "obscene" actions/ideas...unless i felt it was called for/justified.
Think of Chris Carter and Quentin Tarentino doing Event Horrizon. Villans in my game would be the antagonist from (Rob Roy, Seven, and Hannibal). They should be intelligent, cruel, and evil. Anthing less would be lackys or stepping stones for the PCs.
My game is def R rated.

 

[genshou]

Murder, drugs, rape, slavery, torture, demonic possession, fetishes and addictions, and just about anything else you could find in the BoVD? Yep, they make appearances in my games. I'll be omitting a great deal of those references in my story hours, since I want them to stay rated PG-13 or R at the very worst...

But if it's something that can shock and disturb my players, I'll consider it no different from any other gaming content such as a clever new spell. It's simply a literary tool, and a mighty potent one at that. Kinda like Thai peppers.

 

[Eli-kun]

I've been in a few disturbing games. Some had disturbing sexual themes. There was one campaign where all of the player characters were children of Balor. It included the Balor eating all of his children. The player characters then woke up as the prison guards that their original characters had killed at the beginning of the campaign. They were killed again, and they woke up as their original selves at the start of the campaign. It was sort of based on Groundhog's Day. It also included tentacle rape. Also, the orc/balor and dragon/balor decided to love eachother in a way not typical of siblings, while undead.

In one game, two characters decided to reanimate a corpse and have it happily wave and repeat the phrase "hello world."

I had a character who had a pretty disturbed mind. He was still a child during the campaign. The DM allowed this because he was accompanied by his adult guardian. Said adult guardian was an elf that didn't value the lives of lesser races. My character was a half orc. The elf found him as a baby in a village of slaughtered orcs and half orcs. He named the child "Fluffy" and decided to keep him as a pet/slave. Fluffy spoke Elven and Common. The elf was very open and detailed in his stories of the slaughtered orcs. He also said things like "Male, female I can't tell the difference with orcs," If the one who raised you is confused about your gender and refuses to tell you about the differences, chances are you would become gender confused.

There was a game where all dwarves were evil hermaphrodites and centaurs were "twice the man".

Once, my dwarf fighter woke up in the middle of a botched operation and saw her innards.

Once, a character was given a powerful weapon. He destroyed 3/4 of the world population with it. Afterwords, we spent the night calculating the challenge rating, XP and level that would be gained from destroying a planet. This also included the argument that the player didn't do the killing, the resulting natural disasters did.

 

[genshou]

I'm a bit more open about disturbing themes (especially sexual themes) than most in my religion, probably due to my social development more than anything. The problem with mature sexual themes in-game is that calling them a strong spice is a severe understatement–it suggests you actually need to add a pinch to supercharge your food. But the tiniest speck in this case will suffice.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I've played in a game with very depraved PCs - though, interestingly, only half the party was evil. Now that I think about it, some of the more weird and creepy things came about in relation to my sorcerer/alienist as opposed to the half-fiend bard or the half-fiend half-githyanki lich cultmaster.

I'm very interested in using disturbing elements in my games, but then again I'm very firmly against running traditional, Tolkienesque fantasy or Arthurian knight-in-shining-armour games.