What Part Does the Role Play in the Role-Playing Game?

[MGibster]

In my case it depends on how fundamentally off-putting I find the specific views. I connect with a character a bit much to be able to do extended play of someone who's attitudes I find outright repulsive.

For me it's just largely dependent on the setting. If I were playing a patrician or an equite in ancient Rome I'd expect my character has slaves in their household. When I play Vampire I expect to do very bad things to people in order to get their sweet, sweet blood.

But I feel as though I've put too much emphasis on characters who do bad things we would never do. What about character who fundamentally view the world differently from you? I'm an atheist, but I have no problem playing a religious character in a fantasy game or even a game set in the modern age. I love Call of Cthulhu, where the more you know about the truth of the universe means the less sanity you have, but in real life I certainly don't believe learning about the true nature of the universe leads to sanity.

I have found that player resistance to more unsavory tactics fades very quickly when rewards and/or advantage come into play.

Yeah, there's certainly a utilitarian argument to be made by players. The first session of my Night's Black Agents campaign is memorable for all. A few of the PCs captured a guy in a warehouse where they wrapped him shipping plastic, shot him in the knee cap, and spent some time torturing him to get information. One player was playing a former Mossad agent and the other was a former CIA agent and they did this on thier own accord with no prompting from me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

For me it's just largely dependent on the setting. If I were playing a patrician or an equite in ancient Rome I'd expect my character has slaves in their household. When I play Vampire I expect to do very bad things to people in order to get their sweet, sweet blood.

Slave taking is a weird case, and tends to turn on quite how badly slaves in the cultural mileu are handled. Someone who grew up with household slaves and still keeps them in a setting where buying yourself free is a thing likely has a different set of attitudes than, well, other forms of slavery.

But I feel as though I've put too much emphasis on characters who do bad things we would never do. What about character who fundamentally view the world differently from you? I'm an atheist, but I have no problem playing a religious character in a fantasy game or even a game set in the modern age. I love Call of Cthulhu, where the more you know about the truth of the universe means the less sanity you have, but in real life I certainly don't believe learning about the true nature of the universe leads to sanity.

That's why I made the distinction. Weird or distinctive cultural views are one thing; what seem like outright malevolent ones are another, even if they're common in the setting. I suspect I'd have trouble engaging with most characters from Tekumel, for example.

Yeah, there's certainly a utilitarian argument to be made by players. The first session of my Night's Black Agents campaign is memorable for all. A few of the PCs captured a guy in a warehouse where they wrapped him shipping plastic, shot him in the knee cap, and spent some time torturing him to get information. One player was playing a former Mossad agent and the other was a former CIA agent and they did this on thier own accord with no prompting from me.

The problem I have there is there's strong evidence that physical torture is, well, usually counterproductive. Over and above any moral grounds, it produces too many false positives.

 

[pemerton]

If I were playing a patrician or an equite in ancient Rome I'd expect my character has slaves in their household.

Slave taking is a weird case, and tends to turn on quite how badly slaves in the cultural mileu are handled. Someone who grew up with household slaves and still keeps them in a setting where buying yourself free is a thing likely has a different set of attitudes than, well, other forms of slavery.

I can easily imagine RPGers playing in imagined settings such as classical Greece or Rome.

But I imagine that few tables would really treat slavery as it occurred in those places. For instance, I would expect at-table instances of the master raping the slave to be close to or equal to zero.

 

[MGibster]

But I imagine that few tables would really treat slavery as it occurred in those places. For instance, I would expect at-table instances of the master raping the slave to be close to or equal to zero.

For me, sexual assault being played out is pretty much off the table no matter the game. Although one game of Vampire came pretty close with one PC whose feeding method involved putting the magical whammy on his victim and feeding off them as they had sex. We were halfway through the campaign where I just flat out told him his character was a rapist. But then all the PCs were feeding off humanity one way or the other.

Typically in games I run where there's a sharp division between the social class of the PCs and peasants/working class people I just have the latter in the background. In Legend of the Five Rings, the PCs, samurai class, rarely speak with peasants or anyone of the lower classes. Their presence is ubiquitous, but when I describe a room I don't typically describe the peasants because they don't much matter to the plot.

 

[aramis erak]

Slave taking is a weird case, and tends to turn on quite how badly slaves in the cultural mileu are handled. Someone who grew up with household slaves and still keeps them in a setting where buying yourself free is a thing likely has a different set of attitudes than, well, other forms of slavery.

Slavery in many cultures wasn't an ethnic/racial issue. It was a "lost the war" issue.
In such cases, many slaves shared the cultural mores of the slavers, and preferred slavery to death or mutilation... all 3 of fates they'd offer and deliver had they won.

 

[aramis erak]

The problem I have there is there's strong evidence that physical torture is, well, usually counterproductive. Over and above any moral grounds, it produces too many false positives.

In L5R, the validity of the confession often isn't a concern... you find out whodunit, then find something to convict them of. They don't need to match when the result is a choice of seppukku or execution in either case. Besides, only testimony and written confession is valid - an inheritance from it's inspiring feudal era Japan.

My own scenery chewers were thrilled to find the guilty party, and verify the truth, sometimes even by talking to the decedent victims, then get the bad guy punished by any means needed. Including the rare option of a duel to the death.

They put down one serial killer for tax evasion... not that he'd missed a tax payment, but that's what they were able to convince him to sign the needed confession.

it's a situation my players had no issues playing... because their characters did the due diligence.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I can easily imagine RPGers playing in imagined settings such as classical Greece or Rome.

But I imagine that few tables would really treat slavery as it occurred in those places. For instance, I would expect at-table instances of the master raping the slave to be close to or equal to zero.

Yup. That's it; in some cultures slaves were the bottom of the class system, but weren't massively worse off than the step up, so unless you've got a game that emphasizes the really unpleasant elements of being down the food chain, its one of those things you can kind of just move on about. In my Fantasy Briton campaign two of the characters owned slaves (war-captures) but in practice they just were servants that weren't allowed to leave and only got room and board out of it. It was easy to ignore the fundamentally unpleasant nature of "owning" people.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Slavery in many cultures wasn't an ethnic/racial issue. It was a "lost the war" issue.

Or in some cases even "Sold yourself into slavery because you were broke." But yes, see my comment above.

In such cases, many slaves shared the cultural mores of the slavers, and preferred slavery to death or mutilation... all 3 of fates they'd offer and deliver had they won.

And of course even the same culture can vary from period, since Rome was brought up.

 

[Thomas Shey]

In L5R, the validity of the confession often isn't a concern... you find out whodunit, then find something to convict them of. They don't need to match when the result is a choice of seppukku or execution in either case. Besides, only testimony and written confession is valid - an inheritance from it's inspiring feudal era Japan.

Yeah, but it most games/settings it'd be about actually extracting useful information, and potentially being sent after a red herring is at best time wasting, and at worst getting yourself into conflicts you don't want or need to get into.