Satyr - An excuse for rape, or an interesting creature?

[ZombieButch]

Agreed, but is it any different/worse than killing one of the characters? or having them tortured? or any of the numerous other things bad guys do?

To you? Maybe not. To someone who's experienced being raped? Most definitely. I don't want to get into too many details here, but after a very heartfelt and tearful conversation with one of my players, there's a world of difference.

If I'd been a player, honestly, the best response the OP could've hoped for would be for me to walk out on the spot and never come back.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Agreed, but is it any different/worse than killing one of the characters?

Yes. Massively different.

or having them tortured?

Rape's a form of torture. Would you describe a PC being tortured in detail?

 

[Phlebas]

I've played with female gamers who very much use their sexuality and would be quite 'happy' to use that as a RP incident.

I've played with others who get very uncomfortable at any mention of Sex, and quite a few who are strictly neutral

Rule 1 - Know your players before introducing that kind of scene. Same thing probably goes for any capture scenarios

Rule 2 - DM doesn't have to play RAW -
(the PC could wake up with a bunch of flowers and a poem rather than anything untoward if that makes the game flow better - a stalking admirer may turn out to be more of a problem than a one off attack.)

Vague thought - If it truly is based on the ancient greek myths, who says its into girls........

 

[Nebulous]

In the right group though, it could work. There's nothing wrong with a campiagn that glosses over some of the unfortunate things that happen in real life, but there's nothing wrong with a campaign that doesn't ignore them either.

Vorp

I once had fey'ri using demons to rape wood elves in an old FR campaign. I had found some artwork online that was rather graphic and used them as props. It was part of the plot, the fey'ri were artificially raising a half-demon army to raid the surface world, and were exploiting the elves for new magically enhanced progeny. Now, my game group at the time had 2 girls, but i was fortunate enough that they weren't offended by that.

No, they were offended by other, lesser Evils. Like if something bad happened to their character. God forbid, that should never happen in an rpg...

 

[Doug McCrae]

As reluctant as I was to do it, I told the female character that the Satyr "had his way with her" without embellishing the point. I hated to do it, really, but to do anything less than that seemed at odds with this creature's nature.

Why did he only rape the female PC? My impression of the satyr is that it's the embodiment of omnisexuality. Will do anything to anyone. Then five minutes later, he'll want to do it again.

 

[Nebulous]

Why did he only rape the female PC? My impression of the satyr is that it's the embodiment of omnisexuality. Will do anything to anyone. Then five minutes later, he'll want to do it again.

You could also go the route of some "heavy petting", and then the satyr gets chased off by something else (DM discretion). I would be extremely antsy about telling a female player she was just raped, especially without the means to retaliate. Even in the example i gave above, it never happened to the PC's, they were just witness to it.

 

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

To you? Maybe not. To someone who's experienced being raped? Most definitely. I don't want to get into too many details here, but after a very heartfelt and tearful conversation with one of my players, there's a world of difference.

If I'd been a player, honestly, the best response the OP could've hoped for would be for me to walk out on the spot and never come back.

Exactly.

As a rape victim, the encounter that you described would have been enough to drive me away from your table without question.

Whether or not rape is a realistic type of torture is not at all the question when designing your campaign. Yes it happens in the real world. It's horrible. It can ruin lives. But, as the DM, it is your responsibility to take the time to understand your players so that you do not create "scab picking" situations that will cause a player to leave or cause a player unimaginable pain.

 

[Desdichado]

Yes. Massively different.

No. Massively the same.

Rape's a form of torture. Would you describe a PC being tortured in detail?

Which is exactly why it's the same. Still, moot point. He specifically said that he did not describe it in detail.

Rape is a profoundly evil thing. It's supposed to be a visceral punch in the gut. When it happens in fiction, that's exactly its purpose. I can understand why some gamers would be uncomfortable with having it in their game.

Then again, I'd probably be uncomfortable having those players in my game as well. Not that I would focus on it or describe it in detail, but at the same time, I would never pretend that torture, rape, genocide, systematic murder and other equally unpleasant things don't exist in my campaign world. If you can't handle the content of, say a typical GRRM or Black Company book, I don't want you in my campaign on an ongoing basis. I ain't running the equivalent of the D&D cartoon here, or even something as relatively sanitized as Tolkien.

One shots are different; I shoot for all kinds of styles, tones and feels there, but for my ongoing campaigns, I almost always turn fairly dark and serious, and that means that the possibility of some pretty extreme unpleasantness (granted, taking place offscreen in almost all cases) are par for the course. If I'm worrying that my players are suddenly going to storm off in a huff on me, I'm not going to enjoy running the game.

I don't want to give the impression that I'm an insensitive bastige that purposefully goes around trying to offend players either, but I don't want to have to worry about it.

 

[Aus_Snow]

The last satyr I used in a game sat on a tree limb and delivered a prophecy.

That's cool, I like it.

The last one I used actually served as a kind of dalliance for one PC, more or less. So, a consensual kinda thing.

And I certainly agree that monsters, races, or whatever, don't need to be used in any particular way. Especially if that way has a high likelihood of being offensive to many players.

 

[Rhun]

Yes. Characters are frequently killed or tortured by bad guys in genre fiction. Rape is a much less frequent occurrance and far more taboo subject. Not without reason.

Read any George RR Martin? Rape is pretty common in A Song of Fire and Ice.

It really all comes down to how your group can deal with adult subject matter. If someone in the group is incapable of dealing with it, then I agree that it should be glossed over or left out entirely. In a group that is at ease handling such subject matter, I don't see a problem.