TheRPGSite

... and in what way did you deal with it?

Just curious.

RPGPundit

rape, and it was (oddly) between characters.  

playing traveller.  usually i gm'ed, but this time i was playing.  just for the hell of it, a female diplomat.  one of the other players' characters had psionics.  he did some sort of psi thing and (memory is hazy) either knocked out or paralyzed my character, then proceeded to penetrate her with his gauss pistol.  not sure if anything else occurred.  

i, as a player, felt extremely violated.  my character went to the group's demolitions character and rigged the rapist's combat armor with a layer of tdx or some sort of plastique.  then i was able to later look at him through a viewport, eye to eye, and give him an "adios, fucker!" and hit the plunger.  

some say rape is really a power, not a sexual, thing.  i guess i could see it that way (for this example) in retrospect.  i usually gm'ed his characters, and this was his way of "getting back" at me.  he was one of the younger guys in our group, and prone to random acts of (game) violence and lunacy.  i had to deal with the (game) consequences of that.

i think we talked about it afterwards (after i blew him up) and we ended up with no hard feelings.  but it's still, well, weird.

edit:  player/character fuckup

OK, in my A|State campaign all the PCs started the campaign as amnesiacs, with a twist: they'd all wiped their memories on purpose, for obscure reasons which became apparent as the campaign continued (essentially, they were a group who wanted to discover the big mystery behind the City, and had found out that they needed to wipe their minds so that they could look at the problem without the cultural conditioning of their upbringing and experience). Naturally, of course, the device they used to wipe their memory was stolen while they were unconscious after the mind-wipe, so they spent much of the campaign as amnesiacs. Each of the players, rather than coming up with a character background, instead gave their characters personalities and trusted me to come up with suitable backstories. One player chose to play a whiz-kid mathematician and hacker who was severely mentally ill - somewhat like autism, but at the same time not quite.

In the A|State background there's a serial killer operating in one of the districts of the City, and I decided it would be cool if the crazy character was in fact the serial killer, or more specifically one of the killers - I decided it would be better if there were an accomplice to keep "the work" going while the PC had amnesia. In the backstory I came up with, the PC in question was the patient of a brilliant psychotherapist who happend to be mildly sociopathic, who had tried to correct her autism by making her a headband which would correct her brainwaves based on a reference pattern - contributed by himself. This let the PC in question go through the motions of functioning in society without actually "feeling" it - much as sociopaths are meant to do. A field trip to a dingy part of the city went a bit wrong, and the PC in question - who the player had established had a real thing about cleanliness - ended up killing someone who'd gotten her clothes dirty. The psychotherapist had witnessed this and it "clicked" with something deep inside him, and soon they were collaborating on murders on a regular basis - although she tended to do more of the killing than he did. When the mindwipe happened, she decided not to bring the psychotherapist onboard (she felt he was too much of a liability) and left behind her headband, reverting to autism.

The upshot of all this was that when the PCs first encountered the psychotherapist he was nervous but friendly - wanting to get a chance to talk with the psycho PC alone, but not quite trusting her when she wasn't wearing the theraputic headband and not at all willing to trust the other PCs. He'd come to idolise her as an "angel of death" and so kept popping up to help the party, to the point where they counted him as an ally, whilst at the same time he used his moments with them to muster the courage to go and do his own killing in honour of the amnesiac PC. He even thought he was free and clear when the PCs confessed that they'd all lost their memories, but eventually the ex-serial killer PC got her memories back and confessed to the party, who managed to bring the therapist to justice.

I think this worked for two reasons: a) before the campaign start, I said "if there's something you especially don't want to have in your character background, please let me know so that your PC doesn't get ruined if/when they get their memories back", and the player in question had expressed her willingness to have angsty crazy stuff happening in her background and b) I gave myself an "out" - if it looked as though the player would be upset or the party would implode if the PC in question turned out to be a serial killer, I could have pinned it all on the therapist. As it is, though, pretty much as soon as the PCs learned about the serial killer they started speculating that one of them might be the culprit, so I was pretty sure that they wouldn't be OOC disappointed if that turned out to be the case.

Once, long ago, in college V&V game, our GM became irate with our entire group because we refused to stop ridiculing his GMPC. As retribution he began staging fights that we could not win- this all culminated in a scene where we got to watch a supervillian molest a child from behind the protecton of a force field. I guess he thought he was being cool and edgy. We had a large group at the time, though, and at least two of the people in it were survivors of such abuse in RL. That was pretty much the last time we gamed with him.

Quote from: AosOnce, long ago, in college V&V game, our GM became irate with our entire group because we refused to stop ridiculing his GMPC. As retribution he began staging fights that we could not win- this all culminated in a scene where we got to watch a supervillian molest a child from behind the protecton of a force field. I guess he thought he was being cool and edgy. We had a large group at the time, though, and at least two of the people in it were survivors of such abuse in RL. That was pretty much the last time we gamed with him.

that shit is just totally over the line, at least for our group.  the closest thing we allowed was one guy stole an ice cream truck and sold LSD-laced treats to the unsuspecting populace.  then i asked the player if he was wearing gloves while he did so.  "uh, no. . ."

45 minutes later all hell broke loose.

child molestation, tho,  was just an unspoken no-zone for us.

There is pretty much no limits for us, at least as long as it falls with in the story line-child abuse, murder, mayhem, sodomy, rape, arson, torture, abuse of the elderly, robbery, child neglect and molestation, slavery, organ harvesting, abortion, legal guardianship, corporate misconduct, eco-terrorism, misogyny, drugs, addiction, mental instability : you name it we've likely at least touched on it.

In our Shadowrun games we often deal with very adult themes, in what I hope is a realistic fashion. (Similar to shows like law and Order, CSI, and many more.) The Players are not required to make heroes in my games-in fact they're discouraged from making one dimensional and one sided characters. Heroes, like everyone else, have flaws. Sometimes these are major league flaws. Other times they're just minor quirks. All I am looking for is a well thought out concept.

This means sometimes we get PC's who aren't heroes at all. In my game I've had players play serial killers, rapists, arsonists, murderers and criminals of all sorts. Much of what they play depends on the theme of the game-for instance in the current Shadowrun game they're undercover cops, who specifically deal with drug enforcement. So they've come across all sorts of situations in which drugs have ruined peoples lives-selling kids for drugs, prostitution for drugs, murder for drugs.

In other games they have played special operations teams, straight up criminals for hire, regular people thrown into extraordinary events, gangers, and even private investigators.

My group likes adult themes, and although we definitely keep the tone light they like it when the opposition isn't one dimensional.

The D&D game we're gearing up for will deal with the whole sale slaughter of a village, and genocide for land and religion will play a major theme in the game. As the PC's will all be teenagers so will legal guardianship, consent, and other age related themes. They will have to deal with the ideas that often people look at children their age as property, and as incapable of making decisions on their own.

I will say this-we've had a few games that were over the top (We ran a toxic shaman, eco-terrorist game that was really crazy.) and we've had a few anime/hentai rape scenes in the 20 some odd years we've gamed-more as humor, and certainly not something described in graphic detail. (That would be a little creepy I think.)

And we have had a few wing nuts who were really into it, but those cats don't last long at our tables. Overall we don't shy away from anything, but we do expect everything to have a reason to be in the game-even if it's just humor.

Quote from: beeberchild molestation, tho,  was just an unspoken no-zone for us.

I'm pretty sure my group has dealt with this issue, though from behind so many veils that it was never explicit.  But ... I'm pretty sure.

One of my buds played a traumatized psychic girl unhealthily fixated on her own father ... and there were lots of loaded statements about "I will never forgive you for what you did," and the like that never quite specified.  I don't think that my mind is particularly in the gutter though, to think I detected a subtext of molestation.

It got nasty.  Our question, on-screen, was whether we should (or could!) stop her from taking her vengeance on her own father.  My character came down saying that, yes, we had to stop her from killing him ... in order to save her.  Turned out that we didn't stop her ... though the player said that he agreed with my take ... that by destroying her father, she'd broken her own mind beyond any reasonable repair.

I don't know if that's either particularly controversial or mature, though.  Freighted?  Yeah.

Infanticide.

It came up during an old Mage: The Ascension campaign when one of the players who was skirting dangerously close to becoming Nephandi suggested the murder of a newborn to seal a blood ritual he was working on. I felt more than a little uncomfortable with it, but at no point considered using GM veto. It's fiction, after all.

Quote from: DrewInfanticide.

It came up during an old Mage: The Ascension campaign when one of the players who was skirting dangerously close to becoming Nephandi suggested the murder of a newborn to seal a blood ritual he was working on. I felt more than a little uncomfortable with it, but at no point considered using GM veto. It's fiction, after all.

was it dealt with "on screen" or "off screen?"

wholesale, large-scale destruction never stopped our group, but mentioning dead kids would tend to put the brakes on that sort of behavior.  plus there's a difference between bombing a neighborhood v. actually knifing a tyke :eek:

It was once houseruled in one of my groups - on the fly - that you could indeed coup de grace with your teeth, but that it would take two full rounds.

Quote from: beeberwas it dealt with "on screen" or "off screen?"

"On screen," but in a style I'd call "soft focus." I didn't want it to get too graphic, but at the same time I didn't want the player offing babies without accepting the visceral consequences of his actions.

Thankfully that sort of thing hasn't come up again in over 10 years. It's not the kind of experience that I game for.

Rape between PCs. It was pretty awkward, but I wasn't involved. The usual adult themes crop up all the time with the group I play, but usually the bad stuff happens to NPCs or to PCs in their backstories.

Well, there's 'adult' and then there's 'mature'. Those two words do seem to get switched around a lot with 'adult' being more likely to be stuff that an adolescent would consider 'mature'.

Quote from: One Horse TownWell, there's 'adult' and then there's 'mature'. Those two words do seem to get switched around a lot with 'adult' being more likely to be stuff that an adolescent would consider 'mature'.

:D

I did once have an idiot PC, playing a Drow ninja of all fucking things, who insisted on engaging in some fairly detailed torture of a captured vampire.

The rest of the party and I were incredibly uncomfortable and disgusted with the whole thing, and sat there making sarcastic cracks about Abu Ghraib, while the player got all up in the GM's face just about describing in intimate detail various malign behaviors.

The worst part is, the GM (and by proxy the vampire), had made abundantly clear he was all too happy to give away all the information we needed, because he didn't believe we could kill his master anyway, so the entire thing was basically pointless and done only for the player's sadistic pleasure.

It wasn't that long afterwards that he stopped showing up to the game or to hang out, I think I caught on that the lot of us were pretty thoroughly disgusted by his behavior.

Quote from: One Horse TownWell, there's 'adult' and then there's 'mature'. Those two words do seem to get switched around a lot with 'adult' being more likely to be stuff that an adolescent would consider 'mature'.

In fairness to RPGPundit, he did can controversial/"mature", with "mature" in quotes, so I think it's clear that he's looking more for the stuff that an adolescent would consider "mature" (i.e., controversial and/or shocking).

Quote from: John MorrowIn fairness to RPGPundit, he did can controversial/"mature", with "mature" in quotes, so I think it's clear that he's looking more for the stuff that an adolescent would consider "mature" (i.e., controversial and/or shocking).

Like...once...when we were in town...the GM...he said we were in a shady part of town..and umm..in this bar...a girl...hehe...showed her boobies. :eek:

My group is all adult made up of adults. We have no issues like this.
 We do "boot"  or veto new players who don't fit in. Usually because they never quite grew up in their attitudes.



 Now, I do know a young lady ...who in her early 20s took off her top at an RPG session and the players were so into the game that they didn't even notice ....buts thats better talked about in another thread

Quote from: John MorrowIn fairness to RPGPundit, he did can controversial/"mature", with "mature" in quotes, so I think it's clear that he's looking more for the stuff that an adolescent would consider "mature" (i.e., controversial and/or shocking).

Oh, i wasn't commenting on Pundit's wants here really. Just a comment on what some people seem to think of as mature, which seems more often than not to be what an adolescent would consider adult. They're one and the same to some people right?

Quote from: One Horse TownOh, i wasn't commenting on Pundit's wants here really. Just a comment on what some people seem to think of as mature, which seems more often than not to be what an adolescent would consider adult. They're one and the same to some people right?

Indeed, although I think most responses were addressing the "controversial" aspect of the question.

Yes, by "mature" I was really meaning more like themes that a GM might introduce to the game ie. politics, religion, (and yes,) sexuality; not to mention addiction, family issues, philosophy, or other real-world hot button issues. Its a bit of a surprise, though I guess it shouldn't have been, that most of the accounts have ended up being about sexual controversy, and many have been more about "nutcase things players did".

In my case, speaking recently, I guess there could certainly have been an element of controversy to my Roman campaign when I basically told one version of the origin story of Jesus.  The campaign is a Highlander-style immortal game, so of course Jesus was an immortal, but the more controversial part was that I presented him within one of the current theories in religious studies, namely that Jesus was basically a freedom fighter (read: violent terrorist), that somehow turned around and became a pacifist of sorts as he increasingly came to believe in himself as a religious icon; and while I made him fairly special and charming and sincere, he clearly wasn't a God, nor did he ever believe he was (that was later, when Paul showed up).

Granted, that campaign also had its own element of sexual controversy, a little later when I had to basically present pederasty in its Roman context during the time of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian.  What's  more, I had to present it in a somewhat positive light, what with the story of Hadrian and Antinous and all.

My players, to their credit, are quite mature themselves, and I've never really had a problem with having to deal with players wanting to RP raping someone or something like what apparently a few of you have had to deal with (much less another PC! :eek: )

RPGPundit

Quote from: Serious PaulThere is pretty much no limits for us, at least as long as it falls with in the story line

That's about how I feel, but it's fairly easy for me. I've got one core group that's like that, another one not so much.  The first enjoys very dark and horrific campaigns, the favorites being Call of Cthulu and my own Dreamwalker.  In fact, with Dreamwalker a lot of times they were asked to delve into the minds of some really twisted individuals in order to help cleanse their psyches.  

My second group would have been apalled by this.  We played mostly Star Wars with the emphasis on epic heroism. It got dark at times, but never too graphic. It just didn't fit the game.

Pete

Quote from: RPGPundit(much less another PC! :eek: )

Yeah, that's pretty much over the top.  I just posted that my one group could handle pretty much any theme, but what I meant was any theme I presented.  I'm sorry, but I'd be hard pressed not to "punish" a character for raping another, although I'd probably do it within the context of the game.  Some conflict within a party is fun, but I can't see how one PC intentionally raping another (as opposed to being possessed by a lust demon, or something) would do anything but disrupt the entire campaign.

Pete

Rape amongst my player characters and recurring NPCs is just NEVER likely to come up as an event in a game.

 I've got three women players and one guy.

They are playing female characters that like to kick ass, use explosives or get into bar brawls ...and occassionally romance a stray pilot or engineer at the satarport bar.
Rape?  ....or an attack ? Just not gonna happen.

- Ed C.

I just want to say that it's very hard to tell from the content of a game how 'mature' it is.

I guess I'd define mature provisionally as 'something that deals in a thoughtful, engaged way with emotionally serious issues'. But what's emotionally serious to one person isn't emotionally serious to another. There are some people for whom making their character fight a given monster that they really think might kill them is an actual instance of something like real-world bravery. They like their character and they don't want it to die, but they care about something (maybe just their friends' characters) enough that they're willing to risk it. But they're really attached, so it's hard.

That's totally normal gaming content, but it has more seriousness for that person in that context than more 'serious' or 'highbrow' issues do for other people in other contexts.

I'm not exactly saying 'never again', but as a player I'd mostly rather have wish fulfillment than mature content in my gaming. But some of my wish fulfillment involves content which might seem to other people to be mature or serious or whatever. It just depends on where you're coming from.

Definitely wanton Xenocide, Homocide, and Grand Larceny.  These are continuous mature themes dealt with in all of my games.  I mean the PCs are always greedy bastards who just want to kill things and take their stuff - I think most of my group has issues that they deal with through gaming as they're not a violent nor particularly larcenous group in reality.

:D

Joking aside, does it not strike anyone as strange that most people jump right to "sex" when thinking of mature subjects and skip right on over the rampant extreme violence, theft, religious intolerance, racial/species intolerance, etc... that permeates RPGs?

Now to answer the question: I suppose the closest I've ever gotten was the typical "moral quandry" situation. i.e. Kill the entire boatload of innocent, yet horribly diseased child refugees, or watch the whole city die.  That sort of thing.

Quote from: architect.zeroJoking aside, does it not strike anyone as strange that most people jump right to "sex" when thinking of mature subjects and skip right on over the rampant extreme violence, theft, religious intolerance, racial/species intolerance, etc... that permeates RPGs?

Blame the movie ratings for that.  If it's X-rated, it's usually not because of racism or people being killed.

Pete

Quote from: pspahnBlame the movie ratings for that.  If it's X-rated, it's usually not because of racism or people being killed.

Pete

I know what you're driving at, but blaming the ratings, or even the raters, is not the right place.  They're just reflections (and reinforcements) of societal mores.  Not to mention that's a fairly US-centric POV too as much of the rest of the world has fairly different standards concerning sex and sexuality vs. violence.

Sorry, don't mean to derail.  Back to the regularly scheduled posting.

Quote from: architect.zero...................
Joking aside, does it not strike anyone as strange that most people jump right to "sex" when thinking of mature subjects and skip right on over the rampant extreme violence, theft, religious intolerance, racial/species intolerance, etc... that permeates RPGs?

Now to answer the question: I suppose the closest I've ever gotten was the typical "moral quandry" situation. i.e. Kill the entire boatload of innocent, yet horribly diseased child refugees, or watch the whole city die.  That sort of thing.

Architect,
 I wasn't quite sure what Pundit was looking for. Plus, my group doesn't ge "mad" or think of things as controversial if they are touched upon in my game.

We've had racism and species intolerance touched on or debated in my game several times. Specifically, Vilani dislike of Solomani, Hate or bias against Zhodani,  some humans hate of non-humans, whether androids and cyborgs havbe equal rights - that kind of thing.

 That quandry about a boatload of innocent children?

 My bunch of players would be working overtime trying to figure out a way to save both them and the city....


- Ed C.

Quote from: KoltarArchitect,
 I wasn't quite sure what Pundit was looking for. Plus, my group doesn't ge "mad" or think of things as controversial if they are touched upon in my game.

We've had racism and species intolerance touched on or debated in my game several times. Specifically, Vilani dislike of Solomani, Hate or bias against Zhodani,  some humans hate of non-humans, whether androids and cyborgs havbe equal rights - that kind of thing.

 That quandry about a boatload of innocent children?

 My bunch of players would be working overtime trying to figure out a way to save both them and the city....


- Ed C.

Oh it was a poor example Koltar. a) it's too simplistic a scenario and b) my players would've worked overtime for both solutions too.

Sounds like you have a very decent, level headed group.  That's all cool.  I'm just getting at the (seeming) fact that much of what makes up 90% of the RPG experience is a (very) mature subject to anyone but an avid RPG player's standards.

Quote from: architect.zeroNot to mention that's a fairly US-centric POV too as much of the rest of the world has fairly different standards concerning sex and sexuality vs. violence.

No doubt, but I would guess that most of the people who have posted to this thread are from the U.S. (I could certainly be wrong).  In any case, do the ratings of an American-made film change once it leaves the US?

Pete

EDIT:  Last question a blatantly off-topic post.  Please disregard.

I thought first of violence, but then looked over the thread and everyone was talking about sex, so...

I've long tried to make violence something significant in the campaigns I've run. For example, if I've a player who likes to have a badarse character just kill people, then of course I give them names and faces, and describe exactly what a bullet through someone's head does. I'm definitely not some pacifist hippy, but actions have consequences. You don't want to watch someone stumble around flapping his arms then fall over convulsing, then don't shoot him in the head! :D

I find most players have trouble setting aside modern sensibilities and ideas about violence. For example, in many ancient and medieval battles, it wasn't really just a bunch of duels; one side would poke at the other until one of them broke and ran, then they'd be chased and cut down from behind. Not really terribly chivalrous, but that was how it was. And then there's the thing of downing a foe, then finishing him off afterwards. Quite common and expected - but something players sometimes have trouble with, I find.

They also often have trouble with issues of social structures. So if their character has slaves, they're a kind master and never beat them. They tend not to be very deferential to superiors, and when on top try to be "one of the guys."

I think these issues of violence and social structure are fairly controversial - they're the heart of many issues discusssed daily on the news, after all - and they take some genuine maturity and thought to look at.

They even take maturity to decide whether you want to look at the issues, or whether you just want your game world to be some kind of... other world.


Imagine roleplaying in that game world, but with it more closely resembling the real Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1194. Wouldn't that be more interesting? It would certainly be controversial, and require some maturity.

Quote from: architect.zero]Not to mention that's a fairly US-centric POV too as much of the rest of the world has fairly different standards concerning sex and sexuality vs. violence.

I agree.  My Japanese co-workers thought Tom and Jerry was terribly violent when I lived in Japan.  Japanese movies and cable television also have a very different sensibility about showing sex.  They'll show all sorts of graphic behavior and simply hide or pixelize the naughty bits.  American movies and cable television care less about what bits are shown but what people are doing with them.

Yeah, my Pendragon players were a bit surprised by just what the real "rules" of being a knight were, finding some of them fairly unusual based on either modern sentiments or what they expected from a "medieval knights" game.

RPGPundit

The most mature thing that I've ever dealt with in a game I ran, as opposed to played in, was racism.

I had an Unknown Armies game where the PCs were detectives in New Orleans trying to figure out the cause of church burnings. The church burnings were a cover-up by a white supremacist group for a werewolf who only ate black people. He was a werewolf because a voodoo priest had cursed him after he beat up the priest's nephew, a gang member who'd started dating the werewolf's ex-girlfriend (a bearded woman at a local carnival where the werewolf worked). The werewolf had been inducted into the white supremacist organisation because they were the only group of people who accepted him for who he was (as a werewolf). They then used him to get revenge on a local black reverend who was causing trouble for the leader of the white supremacist group (who ran a series of successful and popular pet shops, and who made the werewolf, in wolf form, breed with his prize-winning hunting dogs).

The PCs were: An ex-cop obsessed with an immortal child-molester/serial killer he thought he had killed, a surveillance expert with a voyeuristic obsession, and a small time crook who just wanted everyone to like him. It was one of the coolest games I ever ran, even though it was a PbP that petered out.

Edit: Beer makes extra letters appear in "supremacist".

There was an adventure being promoted on ENWorld once. It involved the party delivering a girl to a location where she would be cared for.

The girl is 12, a psychc, autistic, and the victim of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. While the promo material never came out and said it, the impression given was that the abuse included rape.

The adventure, from what I could tell, dealt with the party learning how the child came to be the way she is, what her new guardians meant for her, and the problems inherent in dealing with a low-functioning autistic.

No on-screen violence or sex, just having to deal with the affects of such on a young child who is quite unable to care for herself. If you've ever dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder or the autistic, you can see what the adventurers are in for. Add in psychic ability and you've got a recipe for disaster.

No good people, you don't need sex or violence for an RPG to have mature content.

I run a lot of historical games, so there's loads of racism, religious bigotry, violence, torture and general shittiness.

Offscreen as a rule.

I like my history as it comes, so I don't want to shy away from what happens when vikings raid a monastery or mercenaries sack a town, but nor do I want to dwell on it in slomo.

Politics comes up constantly, deals for personal gain and issues like loss of faith sometimes as well as lust, revenge and sheer avarice.  All those are good.

But essentially, if describing it would make for an unpleasant atmosphere it happens but offscreen or just factually described.  I game for fun, mature content is there because we're mature, but because we're mature we don't need to wallow in it.

Hm, that sounds judgemental, ah well.

When I was an adolescent we wallowed in detail on all kinds of repulsive stuff, but that's the way it goes at that age for a lot of folk.

Quote from: BalbinusI run a lot of historical games, so there's loads of racism, religious bigotry, violence, torture and general shittiness.

When I was an adolescent we wallowed in detail on all kinds of repulsive stuff, but that's the way it goes at that age for a lot of folk.

This whole post is what I would write.

-clash

Quote from: BalbinusWhen I was an adolescent we wallowed in detail on all kinds of repulsive stuff, but that's the way it goes at that age for a lot of folk.

:eek: Do those games count???  :)

Pete

Quote from: BalbinusI run a lot of historical games, so there's loads of racism, religious bigotry, violence, torture and general shittiness.

Offscreen as a rule.

I like my history as it comes, so I don't want to shy away from what happens when vikings raid a monastery or mercenaries sack a town, but nor do I want to dwell on it in slomo.

Politics comes up constantly, deals for personal gain and issues like loss of faith sometimes as well as lust, revenge and sheer avarice.  All those are good.

But essentially, if describing it would make for an unpleasant atmosphere it happens but offscreen or just factually described.  I game for fun, mature content is there because we're mature, but because we're mature we don't need to wallow in it.

Hm, that sounds judgemental, ah well.

When I was an adolescent we wallowed in detail on all kinds of repulsive stuff, but that's the way it goes at that age for a lot of folk.

What Max said.

Quote from: ImperatorWhat Max said.

Pretty much me too, bar the teenage wallowing in repulsive stuff. I feel short-changed in my teenage roleplaying...

Quote from: Joshua FordPretty much me too, bar the teenage wallowing in repulsive stuff. I feel short-changed in my teenage roleplaying...

Do it when you get old, if you're gaming in your 80s and you try that stuff out what are people going to do?

It's called your second childhood for a reason :D

Quote from: BalbinusDo it when you get old, if you're gaming in your 80s and you try that stuff out what are people going to do?

It's called your second childhood for a reason :D

I have a feeling that it would be considered remarkably tame by the teenagers of 2062. Unless a surfeit of porn leads to a new puritanism that is, in which case I shall enjoy being a dirty old man greatly ;)

Quote from: Joshua FordI have a feeling that it would be considered remarkably tame by the teenagers of 2062. Unless a surfeit of porn leads to a new puritanism that is, in which case I shall enjoy being a dirty old man greatly ;)

For my money, old folk can usually shock the hell out of kids, who are frequently under the delusion that sex didn't exist before them for example...

Quote from: BalbinusFor my money, old folk can usually shock the hell out of kids, who are frequently under the delusion that sex didn't exist before them for example...

I had no such delusions. My grandfather's 'I've had more women than you've had hot dinners' conversation still rings in my ears.

Quote from: Joshua FordI had no such delusions. My grandfather's 'I've had more women than you've had hot dinners' conversation still rings in my ears.

I'm still scarred from the time, aged around 13 or so, I picked up my grandmother's mills and boon novel to see what she was reading.

All I recall is something about his throbbing passion reaching the melting nub of her desire, frankly I'm amazed after that I ever had sex...

I think the most deeply serious things we've dealt with have been unwed pregnancy and abortion vs keeping the baby (Superhero game played in my Millennia setting years back)

Date/Acquaintance rape (and in general rape), as well as love, lust, and pregnancy in my AlienU Hearts & Souls game.


In general I like there to be consequences for pc's actions--for good or ill, and so I follow what they do, or what they tell me is important and interesting. Albeit I do shy away from some topics, I myself am not comfortable dealing with.

For example, I only run games where the characters are heroes, even if they are conflicted, sometimes outlaw, heroes.

I have dealt with enough real world evil and darkness in my personal life to ever want to dabble in that for fun.

In all my time gaming I introduced ONE really questionable topic (child prostitution) in a Werewolf one-shot I ran.
Basically the PCs were investigating a alleged breach of the Veil (strange happenings in a suburban town) and- after some research- came across a 10 year old who had drawn a picture of a "monster", which looked similar to a Werewolf in wolf-man form.
Because they were strangers in the town and couldn't get close to the child without alerting all kinds of authority figures (teachers etc.) they did some quiet observation and found out the kid was living with her (single) mom in a poor neighborhood. They saw a men coming, and- after leaving- giving the mother some money. The enhanced senses of the characters picked up the scent of sex in the air. They think: "OK, the mom has to sell her body tp keep up with the payments." While they felt sorry for her, they didn't feel compelled to step in. But they thought that might make for an excuse to get in the house and look around. So after the man leaves one of them rings the bell. When the door opens he tries to pitch his carefully crafted lie to the mom... until he notices she is not smelling like she recently had sex... and than he hears the sobs of the little girl from the back room...
At that point the players realized what they where dealing with (a really profound moment of silence). After they were over their initial shock, their characters did what they could to get the little girl away from her mom asap.
So that was it. Nothing really graphic, but nonetheless something I would describe as a "controversial/mature" moment in gaming.

A certain immature event occurred, when (during a Flash Gordonesque- pulp game) one player insisted (against all advice on my part) to play a spiderlike allien assassin with a hatred for humans (although he knew most of the other players were humans), that cherished eating his prey alive. Naturally I never made him meet up with the rest of the group and didn't feel compelled to give him extra spotlight time because of his "special concept".

Quote from: Balbinus...frankly I'm amazed after that I ever had sex...

We're shocked as well. :D  (Sorry had to be that guy!)

Quote from: Serious PaulWe're shocked as well. :D  (Sorry had to be that guy!)

Dude, I didn't say more than once...