Poll: Rating your D&D game based on criteria in Monte Cook's article in Dragon #300

[ruleslawyer]

Vile.

Sorry, Jester, but I can't say I'd find the "butt-raping" incidents particularly funny if I were in your game (mainly because low-level humor doesn't do it for me, and obviously because I can't imagine rape being particularly "funny" in any context).

Graphic combat, necrophiliac religions, a CORE class that centers around cannibalism: These are all hallmarks of a "vile" game in Monte's rating system, and I tend to agree with him.

As for my campaign: I'd say "mature," but then I don't think I have much in common with the MPAA as far as my standards of prurience. My depictions of violence can be extraordinarily graphic, but generally this is restricted to cautionary depiction. IOW, I prefer my violence graphic in order to let the players understand exactly what an awful and ideally-avoided thing combat is, and they understand this. Likewise, rather awful depictions of violence come to the fore in PCs' exploration of the lower planes, since my Hells tend to look like those portrayed by Gaiman in Sandman.

Most of the sexual content is off-stage: there are ladies of the evening about, the underground "parties" held by the church of Loviatar (FR) are pretty notorious, and everyone knows where half-orcs tend to come from, but I don't generally describe these things in detail as part of the ongoing campaign narrative. Moreover, I haven't discovered an actual means of handling overt sexual themes in a mature manner in my games; D&D shares little, thematically speaking, with The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Rosy Crucifixion, or Breillat's Romance. [And as a matter of personal taste, I find most depictions of sex in fantasy literature, such as Leiber's and Moorcock's, quite immature and tasteless.]

As for the "gross" stuff: Again, it's known, but there isn't occasion to describe it in detail. The most disgusting cults certainly engage in behavior like cannibalism, necrophilia, and miscegenation with evil outsiders, but there isn't much occasion to describe it in-game.

Oh, and as far as foul language goes: IMX, that's just the way people talk. F-words, S-words, and all sorts of other crap just pours out the mouths of my friends and I OOC during gaming sessions.

[It's ironic, actually: I tend to feel that the American ratings system is overly permissive of cartoon-style violence and overly puritanical when it comes to sex, yet my games contain far more violence than sex. Go figure...]

 

[the Jester]

Vile.

Sorry, Jester, but I can't say I'd find the "butt-raping" incidents particularly funny if I were in your game (mainly because low-level humor doesn't do it for me, and obviously because I can't imagine rape being particularly "funny" in any context).

Graphic combat, necrophiliac religions, a CORE class that centers around cannibalism: These are all hallmarks of a "vile" game in Monte's rating system, and I tend to agree with him.

Well, that's kinda what I figured. Interesting, since I think my campaign is actually not very "vile" overall. The butt-rape incidents surprised me, as did the reactions of the victims; I certainly would have thought that it would have led to at least a falling-out between characters and prolly to blows, but everyone took it in good humor; the party shortly had a "don't touch me in my no-no place" club arise within it. I agree that rape isn't funny in any _normal_ context, but between orcs who all laugh about it after the fact... well, I guess if it's funny to all the players involved... who am I to lecture? I have a longstanding policy of not tampering with someone's roleplaying unless it's obviously metagamed, so I really felt my hands were sorta tied- especially since it started with an orcish ex-monk named Ike Dyson who was based on Mike Tyson (convicted rapist, y'know)...

Don't get me wrong; if they weren't already evil characters they'd have had some massive alignment switches coming, btw.

About the necrophiliac religion: it's always been a very minor cult, and pretty much an adversarial one; I don't think there's been a pc priest of Froth (the deity) since some experimental evil one-shot I ran years and years ago. Actually, that religion is another example of the actions have consequences rule, too; Froth became a god due to some pc actions, and was well-known as a perverted and sick individual. One of those "We made _what_ happen???" things.

The cannibix- it's the remnant of an ancient culture, driven almost to extinction, based around appeasing the forces of nature so they don't come and squash civilization. It was persecuted almost to the point of total destruction centuries ago. It was originally created as a specialty priest of a very savage nature in 2e, and since there had been a pc and several plot lines around it, I didn't feel like just disregarding it once 3e came along. Also, I made it to be the master of the ability increase just as fighters are the master of the feat, monks the master of the class ability, rogues the master of the skills, etc. It isn't all about eating your species, but rather about sacrificing worthy enemies to the forces of nature and eating their hearts to gain some of their power. I actually helped a kid I tutored work on a paper about cannibalism he wrote for school, and this influenced my take on the cannabix a lot.

I don't want to sound like I'm trying to "justify" my game to anyone or anything, just making a few points clear. Especially about the rape issue. I agree: it isn't funny. But humor- well, someone once said "We laugh because it hurts too much." I think that is a very insightful comment on the nature of humor itself; every joke has a butt. I try to laugh at my misfortune whenever I have some; and though I've never been raped and I'm sure it would suck and be very difficult to laugh at, if it happens in game and the victims can laugh about it I'm not going to try to make them role-play it more "realistically" and spoil everyone's fun.

Still, I'm going to vote myself vile... even though my game is fun for everyone, and I've had young kids play in it with their parents' full knowledge and approval (if you're interested, here's the thread I mentioned it in: http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24971).

All that said, I'm gonna go vote and see how everyone else feels they rate.

 

[rackabello]

Say Jester, given your descriptions of your campaigns here and elsewhere on the boards, along with the generally playful and off-the-wall tone of your Story Hour, I can't help but think of film director John Waters. Maybe the poll needs an extra category?

 

[Monte At Home]

My own campaign falls into mature in virtually every category, with a few categories being "standard."

I wouldn't enjoy playing in a game that has more than a few categories in the "vile" area. Just not my thing.

 

[RobNJ]

What I run vascillates between mature and vile. The default is at the mature level--there is sex, there are morally corrupt people, and so on. Occasionally, the details slip into the vile realm. Example: in playing Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, the PCs had made friends with a plucky young girl who ran a shop. Because the PCs were friends with her and they'd drawn the wrong kind of attention, they found her dead and I was explicit with the description. I had engaged them very well in her positive personality, and I wanted them to feel her death very strongly. It worked.

 

[The Sigil]

For me, it's probably square in the middle of "Standard." We flirt with "Mature" once in a great while and occasionally with "Light-hearted." Never have I gone into "Vile" in a campaign I was DMing (have played in a couple though).

We'd probably get a PG-13 for violence - the LotR movie is about what mine looks like - violence and scary evil, but no sex, no torture, no rape, and so forth (heck, due to my kids being at home, I even disallow cursing at the table to keep them from picking up bad habits). I think it really is high fantasy and I stay away from the "dirtier" aspects of the world with the PCs... though I am aware of them and they do from time to time move the backstory along (usually w/o the PCs' knowledge).

I guess I filter my games for my players... in my mind they are mature but at the table they are "sanitized" to standard. Part of this also comes from having a wide age range at the table, including pre-teens, I think.

--The Sigil

 

[the Jester]

Say Jester, given your descriptions of your campaigns here and elsewhere on the boards, along with the generally playful and off-the-wall tone of your Story Hour, I can't but think of film director John Waters. Maybe the poll needs an extra category?

Maybe it does. But I don't know what you'd call it. In any event, I guess I aspire to run a 'mature' game, but I pander to my players to a great extent. I like to get a visceral gut reaction to evil when they encounter it, and sometimes that involves gore or torture, the killing of innocents, etc.; I dunno. I attribute a lot of the tone of my game to the way the players treat it. If you read my story hour, you can see that most of teh funny comes from the actions of the pcs, not the npcs, with some exceptions (like Zenvo playing the spoons).

Hm, food for thought though. I like to run something in between a good Stephen King novel and Roger Zelazny; lots of room there, I guess. What I don't like doing is sanitizing things; I want war to be fun in the game but I don't want it to look like fun irl. In fact, think about it, that's what most all of us do. Is invading a cave complex controlled by hideous monsters, killing them all and looting their treasure fun in the game? Heck yeah! But would it be fun irl? NOOOOO! I think it's necessary to keep in mind that what the characters enjoy, and the lives they live, are usually not what the players would enjoy. How many people really go out adventuring in the real world? My upcoming travels are something like what dnd characters do; I am going to wander the world for a while and see what happens. Most people wouldn't dream of doing that, it's risky; I don't have a job while I'm doing it, I may well end up sleeping outside in the rain sometimes, I could get in all kinds of trouble, I won't know people except for a very few places- heck, I could get killed and buried somewhere and nobody'd know about it for months or years or maybe ever.

I'm rambling here, but I guess what I'm getting at is that a lot of the things that happen in a dnd game are fun, but wouldn't be if they happened to you. Whatever is fun for the players playing, is prolly a lot less fun for the characters. ("OW! I just got fire breathed on me!") As long as the players can have fun with a situation, even if it's truly horrible irl- heck, I'm all for it.

John Waters indeed... snicker... I just saw one of his flicks at a trash film festival a few weeks back, too...

 

[S'mon]

[And as a matter of personal taste, I find most depictions of sex in fantasy literature, such as Leiber's and Moorcock's, quite immature and tasteless.]

Immature/tasteless sex in Moorcock?!

Apart from his name, I've never encountered such a thing, and I've read pretty much all his books. He's a strongly feminist author, albeit he doesn't create much in the way of interesting female characters. I don't recall _any_ sex in Moorcock beyond 'we made love' - what do you mean?

As for Leiber, the only sex I recall that could fit your description would be the Mouser/Hisvet/maids voyeur scene in 'Knight & Knave of Swords', Leiber's final work.

 

[Humanophile]

I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see that "Mature" is the most popular category so far, but at least it's nice to know that "Standard" is a close second. There seems to be some kind of fashion to edginess, and while I don't mind it in the right settings, it's one of those things that has to be handled just right. And IME, most people can't pull it off right.

I'd gauge most of my games as standard, but some of them ratchet up the scale quite unexpectedly. My last game was pretty standard, except for when one character went out to look for brothels, which just got more or less glossed over. I tend to play with people who either couldn't handle a mature plot well if they were handed one, or else who prefer simpler forms of escapism (or just wargaming and number crunching). Still, the times I've seen people try to do vile (and this is just IME, mind you), it blew up badly, and as such I'd rather not risk it until I know that everyone at the table can handle it well.

 

[Wicht]

I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see that "Mature" is the most popular category so far, but at least it's nice to know that "Standard" is a close second.

From reading the comments I would actually hazard a guess that many of us actually fall between the two catagories and that most standard games have elements of the mature in them, especially in regards to violence and death (as mine does). I further suspect that many of us voted mature to ere on the side of caution, I know that I could have picked either catagory myself.

One other thought. It would seem to me that by default, the catagory with the most votes must be "Standard," which makes the whole excercise somewhat absurd.