D&D General What do you allow in your games? (NSFW)

[Bitbrain]

No bigotry? Even with those stinkin’ Elfs thinkin theyre all high n mighty?

My elves are NOT arrogant.

In my now concluded Dark Sun-inspired campaign, the elves were pretty close to the bottom of the food chain. Being rude to humans and dwarves is a really bad idea for them and they know it.

In both of my ongoing Eberron campaigns the Aereni are reclusive, but they don’t think themselves better than everyone else.
As far as the Valenar/Tairnadal elves are concerned, they also don’t think they are better than everyone. They just want to emulate their ancestors’ resistance against the giants of Xen’Drik, so they’re testing the defenses of their neighbors (especially Darguun and Karrnath) because they truly want to engage in a guerrilla-style war against a superior foe.

 

[MGibster]

I've always considered D&D to be a game of high adventure and fun. The settings are places where bad guys chew the scenery, good & evil are palpable forces, and endless waves of villains exist to mow down without any guilt. I don't want to bring in too much in the way of real world nastiness.

 

[Zardnaar]

No bigotry? Even with those stinkin’ Elfs thinkin theyre all high n mighty?

Bigotry is fine as long as it's fantasy. Elves don't like Dwarves or this religion doesn't like that religion.

You don't want to be to over the top with it though if it's based off RL bigotry.

Depends on setting, FR is fairly cosmopolitan, a setting like RL medieval life freedom of religion, speech, sexuality etc may not apply.

I start pCs in the "nice" areas but yeah some parts of the world can be rough. In my current game Kobolds and Dragonborn get it rough and slavery exists.

 

[Horwath]

Everything if it fits the story.

But ofc some details are not presented and they are put into background.

Pedophilia can be a plot device or a motive for good guys to go eliminate evil even if it is at extreme risk to their lives, but no one wants to hear details of the said act narrated in GRRM style.

 

[Campbell]

I pretty much have always followed something fairly close to what Paizo lays out as the Pathfinder Baseline in Pathfinder Second Edition. Also an ongoing discussion of lines and veils is part of play. Generally the X-Card is on the table, but no one ever really uses it.

You might find that your players don’t have much to say on the topic of objectionable content, and just assume that general societal mores will keep the most uncomfortable topics out of the game. That’s not always enough, as that approach relies on shared assumptions that aren’t always accurate. The following is a set of basic assumptions that works for many groups, which you can modify to fit your preferences and those of the other players.

• Bloodshed, injuries, and even dismemberment might be described. However, excessive descriptions of gore and cruelty should be avoided.
• Romantic and sexual relationships can happen in the game, but players should avoid being overly suggestive. Sex always happens “off-screen.” Because attempts at initiating a relationship between player characters can be uncomfortably similar to one player hitting on another, this should generally be avoided (and is entirely inappropriate when playing with strangers).
• Avoid excessively gross or scatological descriptions.

The following acts should never be performed by player characters:

• Torture
• Rape, nonconsensual sexual contact, or sexual threats
• Harm to children, including sexual abuse
• Owning slaves or profiting from the slave trade
• Reprehensible uses of mind-control magic

Villains might engage in such acts, but they won’t happen “on-screen” or won’t be described in detail. Many groups choose to not have villains engage in these activities at all, keeping these reprehensible acts out of mind entirely.

I think it's important to differentiate between the sorts of things player characters might do and what might possibly happen in the setting. I think it's also important to think about the sorts of things that happen on screen and what is merely hinted at.

In general it is important to me that player characters feel like protagonists. They do not have to be heroes. I am fine with conflicted characters and even characters who do some questionable things, but we should still be able to identify with them. They should not be reprehensible. They should feel human.

 

[Scott Christian]

Those things are implied in our games. Very rarely are they described in detail. So implicit, not explicit.

 

[Aaron L]

Every good and bad thing that exists in the real world also exists in our games; human nature isn't altered in the campaigns we run... that doesn't mean we dwell on most of it all that much, but we don't have any "taboos" on any subjects that we prohibit anyone mentioning. Murder, bigotry, slavery, torture, cannibalism (ghouls come from somewhere!) all of these things exist in the worlds of our games... in other words, Evil exists.

In my opinion, pretending that these things somehow didn't exist would only seem to cheapen the nature of Evil. Most Evil tends to be far more mundane than world-conquering demon worshipers, of the kind that we encounter in real life. Pretending that something doesn't exist doesn't make it go away, and pretending that these things don't exist in the game would only make it feel shallow and unrealistic to me; I can accept the existence of magic and dragons as part of the rules of an alternate reality, but trying to pretend that human nature is so drastically different that bigotry doesn't exist? That's just too much for me to swallow. In alternate campaigns we try to have a good mix of down n' dirty tomb raiding, where events of questionable morality are more evident, intermixed with the kind of lofty epic struggles of Good vs Evil where such things just aren't mentioned.

Now if you're asking whether or not these are things PCs participate in, well, not unless they are Evil (yes we allow Evil PCs; I play them sometimes and it can be refreshing) but even then the occasional Evil PCs we have tend to be more "tasteful" (for lack of a better term) and not to go in most of those directions.

But in any event, most of these things aren't something we usually dwell on that much (however, some are essential elements of history) but we would absolutely never act like they don't exist. They are part of human nature, and pretending like they aren't feels like it would only cheapen their existence in the real world... like making a movie set in the pre-Civil War era and pretending there was no slavery.

 

[Slit518]

There is some good data here, and I appreciate the discussion as well.

 

[Nebulous]

My games tend to be PG-13 and rarely go to R-territory. I ran an adult homebrew D&D game years ago where demons were kidnapping elves and breeding with to create half elf/demon hybrids, and I used OODLES of nude fantasy art to get the point across for the players (including 2 females). But that's the only time I ever did that. It's usually quite tame.

Note - When I ran Masks of Nyarlathotep, that was pretty R-rated, but hey, it's Cthulhu. One player went mad and gained necrophilia as a side effect. Those poor dead cultists continued to suffer indignities

 

[Arvok]

I should explain a few of my answers:
In a fantasy world where some creatures can change their form (e.g. dragons), someone might commit bestiality without even realizing it.
Cannibalism is perfectly acceptable among some races (e.g. lizardfolk).
Genocide could be a goal of many evil races.
1st cousin relations were considered normal in medieval times but are often outlawed as incestuous in many Western countries; among non-mammalian intelligent species incest might not be a big deal.
Murder and thievery are the prime jobs of 2 rogue subclasses.
Necrophilia would probably be pretty common among vampires (at least until they got hungry).
What we might call pedophilia today in the West would be considered normal in a medieval culture.
Rape is a pretty common trope in RPGs (half-orcs), though I think it's something that should remain in the background.
Slavery is pretty common among many races in the MM (duergar, mind-flayers, drow, et al.).
Torture was also pretty common in medieval times.

On the other hand, child molestation (as many think about it today--abusing one's own offspring or stepchildren) was very rare up until modern times primarily because the vast majority of families all slept in the same room and possibly the same bed.

Also, I have a problem when people apply modern standards of bigotry and racism to a medieval fantasy RPG. I am NOT condoning modern racism or bigotry, but in a fantasy world where different races are actually different species, AND said races have distinct cultures that value and/or eschew different values, AND in a medieval society where one was expected to follow in the footsteps of one's family/tribe, AND where people from different cultures/races/tribes/kingdoms often wanted to kill each other, I think it's perfectly normal for people to be suspicious or even hostile toward others of a different background. The idea that each of us can be whoever we want to be and are not bound by tradition is a very modern concept. Judging someone by his race/culture/nationality/religion is not such a bad thing in a primitive society because 99.9% of people from a given culture will be what is expected of them. I'm only speaking for worlds I DM, of course, YMMV.