Players, GMs, and "My character"...

[MrMyth]

You may have hit an underlying cause of the disagreement here.

Were the people you're playing D+D with your friends outside the game as well before the game started, or were you strangers before play began?

I always assume (perhaps wrongly) that the people you're playing D+D with are also your friends outside the game beforehand, and that you already vaguely know what makes each other tick. And, that you are capable of separating in-character actions and emotions from out-of-character actions and emotions.

Yeah, gonna have to say this doesn't have anything to do with it. I'm firmly opposed to your viewpoint, and I'm also of the type that inherently assumes people are generally gaming with folks who are already out-of-game friends.

That doesn't change the fact that if someone acts badly, those friendships can be damaged. I've seen drama erupt amongst groups of gamers quite a few times, friends or not.

Its part of the problem, in fact. Player 1 assumes he knows player 2, and so starts up this in-game romance. Player 2 isn't comfortable with it, and so asks it to stop.

At which point, by your comments, you advocate player 1 ignoring his friend's feelings, and beginning actual harassment of player 2. That's the point at which player 1 is not acting like a friend, and that's going to cause problems both in the game and out of it. And that's what the rest of us are objecting to.

I don't think we can assert that player #1 is immune to OOC condemnation for 'harassing behavior' and also player #2 is immune to criticism for being uptight. I don't think you can issue a blanket statement saying that player #2 has every right to publicly correct player #1 undiplomatically, but that player #1's responce to player #2 is something more than correcting player #2 in an undiplomatic fashion. I mean, I can probably agree that neither player is handling this in the best possible fashion and with the most mature cue's, but I'm not prepared to agree which one is being 'immature' and a 'jerk'.

That's the point, though - initially, neither is. One of them is an overenthusiastic roleplayer and the other doesn't want to play outside his comfort zone. It is the point at which player one is asked to stop, and their response is not to respect the second player's wishes, but to instead respond by making it worse or taking it out on them in-character. Those are the actions that are meriting the 'immature' or 'jerk' label, and I'm not sure how one can defend it otherwise.

If the second player didn't respond by asking player one to quite it, but instead responded by insulting him and telling the DM to kick the other player from the game... then yeah, he's the one earning those labels. But that wasn't the example that we had been discussing.

Just to repeat my position - if one player engages in behavior that makes other people uncomfortable, they have the right to ask him to stop. If he feels really strongly about what his character is doing, maybe he can have the group talk it over and find some sort of compromise.

But if his response is simply to escalate, and respond by "giving him a bad time", or to "follow the advice of the mighty King Crow" and kill the character and take their stuff... yeah, sorry, you have crossed the line and are most definitely acting in an immature fashion.

I don't care if your justification is that this is just how your character would act, I don't care if you are just trying to get your friend to 'lighten up' or help them work through some perceived psychological issues. Regardless of reason, what you're doing is most definitely not cool.

I wish that we could keep gender references out of this, because I think its biasing the conversation in certain ways. I think by making the 'harrassed' character female, we are engaging in subtle gender bias, not only by making the assumption that women are more likely to be victims, but in making the other player fit into a sterotype of the geek making unwelcome character advances. Let's make this more general, and try to avoid our biases where we can.

To be fair, I've been assuming in the theoretical example that both players are male, but one just happens to be playing a female character.

Especially since Lanefan (who was largely the source of the example) made note that the other player would like be a him, since "it's always 'him's who have these issues".

Of course, I might note that this gets into an entirely new area of problems with Lanefan's assumption that female players could never possibly object to unwanted in-character romances from another player. But, uh, that's probably a topic for another thread entirely.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I think some of us (ME!) are confused. I meant to advocate killing the creepy PC and taking his stuff.

 

[Pbartender]

But, uh, that's probably a topic for another thread entirely.

I'm certain it's been the topic of dozens upon dozen of other thread already.

 

[Dausuul]

I think some of us (ME!) are confused. I meant to advocate killing the creepy PC and taking his stuff.

By "creepy PC," then, you mean the one whose player initiated the PC-on-PC romance?

 

[Celebrim]

Biases? Gender Bias?

In the real world, most RPGers are male.

My current table is the first game I've ran since high school where all the players are male.

Most are heterosexual.

And my current table only meets that description for picky values of 'most'.

I don't know whether the genders of harrasser and harrasee matter much, but but talking about reality in terms of bias and stereotyping takes you out of the reality-based community.

Speaking of phrases that should make you stop and self-examine, 'out of the reality-based community' is one that definately needs to make the list. Much like 'narrow-minded' its one of those claims that I find is highly indicative of the claim maker needing to do some serious introspection.

And just as funny and ironic side note, 'reality-based' means it isn't real. The stem '-based' modifies something to mean 'partially', in the same way that a 'reality based movie' is only partially a true story.

 

[Raven Crowking]

By "creepy PC," then, you mean the one whose player initiated the PC-on-PC romance?

Yes.

Let the PCs react as they would where that character an NPC.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I advocate that you can make whatever kind of PC you want, subject to GM approval. This does not mandate that the other players react the way you would like them to. Should they discover your dishonest/stealing/prima donna/backstabbing/creepy/evil PC is what he is, and then react the way they would if he were an NPC, that's perfectly fine. Indeed, I have found that this is the best way to discourage dishonest/stealing/prima donna/backstabbing/creepy/evil PCs in a group where they are inappropriate. I let the other players decide that they are inappropriate. YMMV.


RC

 

[Jacob Marley]

Got that a bit backward. Let's recap shall we?

1. Player 1 creates a character in a vaccuum and decides to make his character in love with Player 2's character.

2. Player 1 makes sure that this love interest is a secret from Player 2.

3. During the course of play, Player 2 (the Thief character) gets wigged out by Player 1 and asks him out of character to stop. He's not interested in this sort of thing.

4. Player 1 refuses to stop and continues on, to the point of making light of Player 2's request and, quite possibly, killing Player 2's character.​

​

Are parts 1 & 2 even that relevant? All that matters, IMHO, are parts 3 & 4. Assume, for a moment, that Player 1 creates a character who is in love with Player 2 and Player 2 agrees to that set-up. Now suppose that during the course of play, Player 1 pushes the boundaries of what Player 2 finds acceptable. Player 2 gets wigged out and asks him to stop. He's not interested in that sort of thing.

In both cases Player 1 is pushing the boundaries of what Player 2 finds acceptable. Is Player 2's knowledge of a "romance" relevant?

 

[Dausuul]

[/INDENT] Are parts 1 & 2 even that relevant? All that matters, IMHO, are parts 3 & 4. Assume, for a moment, that Player 1 creates a character who is in love with Player 2 and Player 2 agrees to that set-up. Now suppose that during the course of play, Player 1 pushes the boundaries of what Player 2 finds acceptable. Player 2 gets wigged out and asks him to stop. He's not interested in that sort of thing.

In both cases Player 1 is pushing the boundaries of what Player 2 finds acceptable. Is Player 2's knowledge of a "romance" relevant?

It changes, somewhat, the starting point of the ensuing discussion--from "Is this romance acceptable?" to "What are the acceptable boundaries?" But otherwise, no.

(And even in this situation, Player 2 can decide to nix the whole thing and that should be respected... although in that case Player 1 has a legitimate complaint that Player 2 is yanking him around.)

 

[Celebrim]

Just to add.

I've actually had this happen to me in game...

Good story.

I think that it would have been perfectly acceptable to wait to some break in the game or end of session to plan out with the other player how this was going to work. I encourage that. I don't think that is in and of itself entirely a solution. I mean, it's going to be great if everyone is perfectly understanding, but ultimately all you are doing is just saying, "No." No matter how much you say, "This is my problem, not yours.", you've just slapped down some other players idea. It would be great if everyone could identify ahead of time what would make other players uncomfortable, but alot of the time the very things that make some people uncomfortable are the very things that make some other people most excited and intrigued by the game.

For my part, I learned about 'romance' in RPGs the hard way - from being part of the early days of the MUSH community. It was virtually impossible to RP for long with out getting propositioned for a little 'ts' - often by some otherwise quite good RPers. This occurred despite the fact that I went out of the way to create characters that would not (I thought) encourage that line of play - old men, young boys, homely individuals, religious figures. Naturally, none of that worked to discourage it much. Other than just breaking character and slapping the person down (which was often very warranted I grant you) there were alot of other gambits I found you could take at that point.

1) You could have the character be uninterested and respond basically with the sort of gentleness you hopefully aspire to respond with when some feels something toward you that you can't recipocate.
2) You could make a point of ignoring it.
3) You could redine the relationship, and offer a new line of RP - "I think of you as just a friend.", "I love you as a daughter.", "You've been a better friend to me than my real mommy.", "Tu est ma soeur" Ect. There are alot of different approaches that don't kill the idea of an intimate friendship, while diverting the idea of 'lover'. It's not like there is only one story here and it involves sexual consumation.
4) Similarly, story book romance rarely involves any sort of immediate recognition of deep feelings. Good story book romance finds reasons to keep the couple apart, so even if the romance plot line is reasonable for both characters, there is no reason to hurry it at all because almost all story book romance involves a fairly long period of unrequited love. Male characters in particular are sterotypically completely unaware and clueless about the affections of the female character, no matter how blatant they are. Likewise, male characters who idolize a female character are sterotypically cowards, unable to express their true feelings and so overcome with nerves that they put there foot in the mouth and derailing the romance at every step.

Now, if I did that, probably 75% of the time it ended the RP. In many cases you were just dealing with young pervs trolling for a thrill, and if you weren't interested in verbal consummation they weren't actually interested in playing. But in many cases, you could deflect out of the uncomfortable situation and continue play without going to OOC and saying in effect to someone's face: "There is something wrong with you." Often this was very rewarding.

Granted, face to face is even more intense and more likely to be uncomfortable, but so is rejection when you friend goes face to face: "You are making me uncomfortable." I mean what are you going to do when that happens to you: "Sorry man. o0O(I'll just go crawl in a hole now.)"?

My first reaction in this situation probably would have been one of #1 to #3, mainly because I'm married and not sure how my spouse would take this. My second reaction in this situation (had I been more comfortable with it or really trusted all the players or wife is at the table and doesn't seem uncomfortable) would been I think to have tried to throw this into a love triangle along the lines of Cyrano de Bergerac (as an initial inspiration), using the character of real spouse of the other player as my confident and playing the coward and stumbler (for whatever reasons relevant to the character I could invent). I'd also see if I could subtly push the other player toward a love triangle role where we might end up in a classic case of unrequited affections all the way around. Shakespearian comedy (or tragedy) hopefully ensues depending on how the intraparty conflict ends up resolving.

Alot of what informs my perspective on this is that 90% of my play is as the Dungeon Master, and when you are playing as the DM you have to be at least somewhat comfortable with everything. I have had on several occassions players get 'crushes' on NPCs. Now, I'm not going to RP out any significant physical details of that, but I think it would be less than gentle to take a player who has become emotionally attached to one of your creations and slap them down for being emersive in a setting that you set out to be emersive. I mean, just what is the player doing that is 'wrong' in that situation? Don't you as the DM wan to create characters that are emotionally engaging? Isn't that somewhat of the point?

 

[S'mon]

Speaking of phrases that should make you stop and self-examine, 'out of the reality-based community' is one that definately needs to make the list. Much like 'narrow-minded' its one of those claims that I find is highly indicative of the claim maker needing to do some serious introspection.

Actually I did, if not self-analyse, at least reconsider while I was heading home from work today. And I came to the conclusion I probably shouldn't have made that post.