How to avoid RPG dumpster fires like the Far Verona controversy

[MGibster]

You are talking about what is "likely". As if you have a handle on what happens at hundreds of thousands of tables around the world? Care to tell us how you got this handle?

By your question, am I to assume that you have a handle on what happens at hundreds of thousands of tables around the world? Strike that, it doesn't matter. We could type at one another until our fingers bleed and we'll probably just cover the same ground over and over. I understand that you're coming at this from a position of wanting to make things safer and more inclusive for all players and I respect that. However, I maintain that role playing is not an inherently dangerous activity in that the chances of participants being harmed is extremely unlikely. And with that, I surrender the field to you.

 

[cmad1977]

Eh.

Fine publicity-stunt, mostly.

A (co) game-designer (Koebel), Europe's most popular D&D streaming GM (hulmes), director of creative commons@twitch (djwheat), a Geek & Sundry & Twitch partner (vana), and a voice actress (elspeth).

Sure.

Get everyone talking about the episode. Hype-train jumps to MACH 2. All the RPG forum talking heads are clutching their pearls and shaking fists at the monitor.

Adam's not any thing close to an idiot who burns money. This was planned and probably coordinated by the group.

Clever.

This is why, despite its limited mechanical impact, one should NEVER make intelligence your dump stat.

 

[Gradine]

Re: The completely inane and off-point conversation about the "inherent danger" of roleplaying:

The biggest issue that we have here is that a large segment of the population believes/has been raised to believe that emotional/psychology harm is not real harm. This is, of course, not true, but it's a common enough belief in the popular culture (e.g., "sticks and stones") that it has to be addressed up front. So here it is: emotional/psychology harm/danger is real and oftentimes as consequential as physical harm. You can disagree with this but then, you'd be wrong. There's literally no point in continuing the conversation if we're not on the same page about this very basic fact.

Provided we're on the same page now, we now must discuss the inherent vulnerability found in role-playing. Role-playing is, at its very core, a social experience involving improvisation, usually mutual teamwork, and placing oneself in another persons' shoes. All of these contribute to making oneself vulnerable, at least in a social-emotional context. Now, how much vulnerability that requires will vary greatly depending on the table and the game; you've got your intense psychosexual World of Darkness dramas on one end of the spectrum and your beer-and-pretzels dungeon-crawlers on the other. But I think at either end there's at least some vulnerability involved, if not actual danger.

 

[wingsandsword]

As a D&D player, I've been in a similar situation to this Far Verona scene and it's just the worst gaming experience I've ever had.

Same, I had something similar happen in one of the first campaigns I was ever playing in.

It was the summer of 1998, playing an AD&D 2e Planescape game. It was only my 2nd time PCing in a campaign.

The DM was my new roommate, someone I'd met in college and we'd agreed to get an apartment near campus together. He was a relatively experienced player (as in he'd been playing and running D&D for about 6 years, compared to about 6 weeks for me), we were both circa 19 years old and in college.

On one of our early adventures, our party ended up stuck somewhere on the outer planes (I don't recall which one) and the only portal back to Sigil was kept by the Sensates, and they'd only let our party through if at least one member of the party was a member. . .but every other player had already chosen a faction. My character hadn't formally declared membership in a faction yet, but was leaning towards joining the Guvner's. Since my character was the ONLY one that was eligible to join, the plot pressure to join the Sensates was high.

Well, it was out of character for my PC to join that faction in the first place, then he puts me on the spot saying that to join you have to have some kind of memorable or unique experience to share with the Faction via their little magical memory crystal devices. Everything from my character's backstory or adventures I could come up with wasn't good enough. . .but then the DM had the Sensates tell my character that they'd arrange for suitable experiences to qualify for membership, just sign this pledge to join. . .

. . .so, feeling the heavy railroad of plot, my character signed the pledge.

The DM then tells me that was a magically binding contract that my character can't reneg on, and it was broadly worded to let them do anything to my character that wouldn't cause permanent harm (and they'd heal any non-permanent harm) as long as it would create experiences sufficient to allow membership in the faction, as long as I join the faction afterwards.

. . .and of course, the "experiences" the DM had in mind were sexual. Cue the DM going into deeply uncomfortable details with the sexual encounters my character was now compelled by that magical contract to participate in. When I didn't volunteer details of what my character was doing, the DM narrated instead what my character was magically compelled to do.

. . .and at the end, the DM just briefly closed up by saying when it as done, they opened the portal and we all went through back to Sigil.

The scenes were a mix of same-sex and opposite-sex encounters, couple and group sex, bestiality (using shapeshifting where one partner would turn into an animal) and magically-augmented BDSM, as the DM essentially narrated his D&D fetish fiction for about 10 minutes.

I was disturbed and nauseated by the whole experience, as the DM played it off as a normal part of D&D.

I found out later he'd set it up intentionally, making me play out that sexual scene in front of our friends as some attempt to "loosen me up", he saw me as too uptight and straitlaced, that he thought roleplaying out some kinky sex scenes in front of our friends in a D&D game would actually be a good thing and would help me grow as a person and become more mature.

It was wrong on so many levels.

 

[Mort]

Same, I had something similar happen in one of the first campaigns I was ever playing in.

It was the summer of 1998, playing an AD&D 2e Planescape game. It was only my 2nd time PCing in a campaign.

The DM was my new roommate, someone I'd met in college and we'd agreed to get an apartment near campus together. He was a relatively experienced player (as in he'd been playing and running D&D for about 6 years, compared to about 6 weeks for me), we were both circa 19 years old and in college.

On one of our early adventures, our party ended up stuck somewhere on the outer planes (I don't recall which one) and the only portal back to Sigil was kept by the Sensates, and they'd only let our party through if at least one member of the party was a member. . .but every other player had already chosen a faction. My character hadn't formally declared membership in a faction yet, but was leaning towards joining the Guvner's. Since my character was the ONLY one that was eligible to join, the plot pressure to join the Sensates was high.

Well, it was out of character for my PC to join that faction in the first place, then he puts me on the spot saying that to join you have to have some kind of memorable or unique experience to share with the Faction via their little magical memory crystal devices. Everything from my character's backstory or adventures I could come up with wasn't good enough. . .but then the DM had the Sensates tell my character that they'd arrange for suitable experiences to qualify for membership, just sign this pledge to join. . .

. . .so, feeling the heavy railroad of plot, my character signed the pledge.

The DM then tells me that was a magically binding contract that my character can't reneg on, and it was broadly worded to let them do anything to my character that wouldn't cause permanent harm (and they'd heal any non-permanent harm) as long as it would create experiences sufficient to allow membership in the faction, as long as I join the faction afterwards.

. . .and of course, the "experiences" the DM had in mind were sexual. Cue the DM going into deeply uncomfortable details with the sexual encounters my character was now compelled by that magical contract to participate in. When I didn't volunteer details of what my character was doing, the DM narrated instead what my character was magically compelled to do.

. . .and at the end, the DM just briefly closed up by saying when it as done, they opened the portal and we all went through back to Sigil.

The scenes were a mix of same-sex and opposite-sex encounters, couple and group sex, bestiality (using shapeshifting where one partner would turn into an animal) and magically-augmented BDSM, as the DM essentially narrated his D&D fetish fiction for about 10 minutes.

I was disturbed and nauseated by the whole experience, as the DM played it off as a normal part of D&D.

I found out later he'd set it up intentionally, making me play out that sexual scene in front of our friends as some attempt to "loosen me up", he saw me as too uptight and straitlaced, that he thought roleplaying out some kinky sex scenes in front of our friends in a D&D game would actually be a good thing and would help me grow as a person and become more mature.

It was wrong on so many levels.

Wow, after an early experience like that - it's amazing you maintained the hobby!

 

[wingsandsword]

Wow, after an early experience like that - it's amazing you maintained the hobby!

I was also at the time in a MUCH better D&D game run by a better DM, had played in a lot of one-shot games, and I'd been running and playing the d6 Star Wars RPG for about a year at that point, so while I was still fairly new to D&D, I DID have enough of a frame of reference to know that wasn't typical of a game session.

 

[Hussar]

I'll freely admit that this sort of thing hasn't come up at my table. And, I certainly hope I never made any player feel uncomfortable. But, I have met more than a few DM's over the years whose self centered myopia regarding the game could easily lead to (and indeed did lead to) some pretty brutal friction with the players.

Granted, yeah, nothing of a sexual nature has happened in my presence, but, unfortunately I have no problems believing that it can and does happen.

 

[the Jester]

Does this type of situation occur often at the tables of others? I have never incorporated sexual violence into a single campaign, and neither have my DMs/GMs. Is this a normal thing?

I'll speak up as a DM who is perfectly happy to dabble in subjects that would, for most groups, cross the line, including cannibalism, rape, violence against children, drugs, etc.

First off, by "dabble in", I mean that those things are out there in the world, and that pcs can and do brush up against them. "They killed my baby" is a great motivator- but it works best when it's an npc whose baby was killed asking good-guy pcs for help. I don't employ any of those things against the pcs as a matter of course, but they could be the victim of any of those things in theory.

In practice- well, I ran a sexual assault scene exactly once, when I was around 13 or 14. There was a lot of glossing over the details followed by serious revenge involving a 1e staff of withering being employed in a very fitting way. The player was fine with it; but it was a male player, and we were, you know, kids, too young to have fully developed things like good taste, common sense, and empathy. And I knew the people in the group- I knew them well enough to know that nobody was going to freak out about it (we didn't have the term 'triggered' back then, hair splitting aside).

Since then, I haven't seen any situation where it was appropriate to the game. And even if I did, being as I am now an adult with a much greater understanding of things like trauma, empathy, and the creepiness of the scene, I would be very leery to employ it. Even knowing the members of my group largely for decades, and knowing that none of them would be horribly offended, or seriously disturbed, or triggered, or whatever- it's just a creepy scene to run. So, even though it's a possibility in theory, I think it's very unlikely to ever come up.

So, no, I would say it's not a normal thing, even at a table where sexual assault is theoretically 'allowed' by the social contract.

 

[DammitVictor]

What's appropriate at the gaming table is decided at the gaming table.

There's nothing wrong with depicting any degree of graphic sexual violence, or any other uncomfortable subject matter, at the gaming table... as long as every participant has given their informed consent beforehand, and the game stops when any participant's enjoyment of the game stops.

That's not what happened here, and it's the biggest point that edgelords tend to overlook.

 

[Mort]

What's appropriate at the gaming table is decided at the gaming table.

There's nothing wrong with depicting any degree of graphic sexual violence in-game, or any other uncomfortable subject matter, at the gaming table... as long as every participant has given their informed consent beforehand, and the game stops when any participant's enjoyment of the game stops.

That's not what happened here, and it's the biggest point that edgelords tend to overlook.

Right - this situation violated 2 of the biggest rules of GM Player interaction:

1. Full communication is key - It is the GMs job to ensure that the players are in a safe, fully informed environment. It doesn't even have to be something this deep (sexual assault). For example, if the players are expecting fantasy and everyone has agreed that's whats going to be run and the GM instead runs SCI-FI - that could be a problem. This situation was just an extreme example of that;

2. Don't be a jerk - this simple rule needs to govern, and it wasn't in place here. The GM ran right over the horrified players for his own amusement.