Splintered from here.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1122830To be fair, I've run across this belief before from distinctly non-SJ thinkers as well; I once had a rather interesting discussion on TBP, well back before it moved to its current extremes, about the morality of playing games like Little Fears in which, as it was pointed out to me (with admittedly rather sound logic) the players are basically mentally envisioning acts of horrible abuse happening to children for the sake of their own entertainment. The gentleman who held this stance was most definitely right-wing and traditionalist in his outlook.

While it was (and is) my contention that nothing done in the imagination which is known to be imaginary and never intended to be real can be immoral in any objective sense, I nonetheless had to concede that there are some extremes of fantasy at which it's not unreasonable to raise a hackle or two, and to which one can be validly averse to allowing or encouraging in a game. Who we pretend to be is not who we are, but who and what we enjoy repeatedly pretending to be and do, by our own choice, can often say more about us than we are sometimes comfortable acknowledging. I think most people have encountered That Player at least once, the one whose characters squicked the rest of us out.

What I object to in the SJ outlook is the presumption that the connection between fantasy and reality is proscriptive and inevitable, and that it ultimately represents the only "real' reason anybody games in the first place, rather than simply being one element of it and not necessarily an indicative one. It's the assumption that we can't be trusted not to be That Player without the game itself trying to force us not to be.

Quote from: Omega;1122852Its nothing new really. And goes back at least to the early silent movie era and I'd bet there were sporatic incidents as long as theres been stage plays and actors. Some people just cannot grasp acting and for god unknown reasons see the actor and the character as one and the same nearly, or at least that the actor must have the same inclinations as the character. This seems to invariably be directed at the villains.

SJWs just take it to insane extremes as they do everything else. Hell its popped up in board gaming even.

Quote from: Heavy Josh;1122883I'm reading this, and a few things begin to make sense. I can see that there are some people for whom RPGs give them the license to go to dark places and enjoy imagining doing dark things there a little too much.  That Player has definitely made me uncomfortable...

But the rest is eye-opening. There's a certain puritanical aspect to the proscriptive connection between fantasy and reality, isn't there? Unless one's thoughts and imagination are good, there is no way to behave "good". So, where does this attitude stem from?  Is there a basis for this "imagination is who you really are" in psychology, or sociology? Or is this a pop-pseudo-science-psychiatry? Or is this entirely cynical?

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1122885Its definitely true that the media we consume influences us on some level. If it didn't we wouldn't watch it. Its also desensitized us to stuff maybe we could have been sensitive towards otherwise.

The question is of course the level it influences us and the amount of reasonable responsiveness. Maybe relishing in sadisism and the misery of others can be dangaerous but maybe not. I err more on the side of "Let people do what they want" but I still get the principle of not wanting overexposure.

My thoughts on the matter aren't fully baked at the moment, and probably won't be for awhile. There's definitely a middle ground here, and it may just be that it's different for everyone. So until then I'd really like to hear where everybody else thinks this line should be drawn, because this issue is at the heart of the current culture war when it comes to RPGs.

If you are a "little blue" or "down" for some reason, consciously choosing to try to be more cheerful can help.  Think positive thoughts.  Make yourself smile.  Dwell on blessings.  To act the thing is to move towards being the thing.  If you are clinically depressed or suffering from something truly overwhelmingly nasty, none of that will help much.  It may help a little, for a short time, around the edges, but you will still get overrun by the tsunami of feeling.  How well you do coming out of it will depend on all kinds of things, such as long-term mental resilience, support network, addressing the primary causes, etc.  This is well-understood, and not much debated as a concept, though of course there is disagreement about how strong or weak the effect can be.

Related, "visualization" as a technique works for a lot of people.  Want to be successful in the presentation?  Get prepared, then imagine yourself being successful in the presentation.  Visualization isn't a thing that works by itself, but it can put you over the top.  I do it all the time.  While that's something that can't really be measured, it correlates well enough to success that I keep making the effort.  (Whether it helps because of placebo effect, or just building confidence, or something more--doesn't really matter if one gets results, does it?)  Of course, you also get some of the effects of low-grade practice, which is why to supplement fire drills and now "active shooter drills" we don't just practice them but talk about them.

Applying to RPGs, habitually mentally imagining the same thing can make a person more competent and practiced in that thing, without necessarily doing it.  That immediately prompts the question of what people are doing when they visualize something truly nasty.  I can easily think of three without even trying, and I'm sure there are more:

1. Reveling in the nasty (bad).
2. Gaining empathy for the kind of person that would do such a thing (generally good, but a little risky for some people).
3. Pursuit of drama.

The last one is why GMs can play the bad guys for years at a time with no nasty side effects, and why anti-heroes are a thing.  

I think it is the same as it has ever been.  There are a tiny slice of people who should not be involved in excessively nasty media in any way (including RPGs, or even especially RPGs), because they have a mental problem that make them gravitate towards the worst side of practice and visualization.  RPGs won't make people crazy, but they can let crazy people go into a bad channel.  But that's true of all kinds of things, including books, film, and even music.

I would also say that the kind of people who get all bent out of shape about such things in the culture war are the type of people that probably shouldn't play RPGs--at least not without talking to their therapist first.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1122898I'd really like to hear where everybody else thinks this line should be drawn, because this issue is at the heart of the current culture war when it comes to RPGs.

It's a good question. It's certainly true that I've never played characters of a significantly different moral and ethical outlook from myself -- the most "ethically challenged" character I ever played was a psionically superpowered cat burglar inspired by the "Macavity" NPC idea in the first edition of GURPS Supers, who only ever stole from the idle rich who could afford the losses. Even in my AD&D1E days, when I played druid characters who in principle held a philosophically "neutral" outlook, the characters themselves always kept their word, looked out for the needy and the innocent, and only used violence in defense of their own life. And I would certainly never have played a character capable of betraying or backstabbing his allies and friends for his own benefit: not only did I know that would tick off my friends in real life to no end, the idea just had no appeal or fun for me at all. (I've never even been able to enjoy playing the game Diplomacy, because you can't win in that game without betraying allies at the right moment.)

So in practice for me, yes: in a game where I'm given my own personal druthers, I only generally "pretend to be" different versions of myself because that's where I get my enjoyment out of the game: the personal wish fulfillment. (As an actor I can play, and can enjoy playing, characters very different from me, but the big difference there is I'm doing it in service to a script and a pre-written story, where the highest priority is the audience's entertainment, not my own.) If the SJ desire for games that actively encourage all kinds of diversity in PC types was solely about making sure everybody knows they can do this kind of self-projecting wish fulfillment, no matter who or what you happen to be, I wouldn't have so much of a problem with it.

Unfortunately that's not solely what it's about, by these advocates' own admission: the encouragement of "diversity" in games isn't intended solely as an encouragement note for "diverse" gamers, but as moral and social advice (read: browbeating) for the real lives of those of us not sufficiently personally intersectionally diverse. The assumption is that if people can change a popular entertainment, the entertainment will influence the consumer into different behaviour; the problem is that insofar as that's true at all, it is true only where that advocacy doesn't ruin the entertainment to begin with (cf. Birds of Prey; while it was never a very good movie, it tanked on its opening weekend far more due to annoyance with its "woke" advertising than with the film itself). SJ advocacy is not the first movement to make this mistake, either, as witness the running-gag disdain for self-consciously Christian rock music.

Myself I would have to say that while it may not be possible to define exactly how to draw the line between healthy and unhealthy consumption of/indulgence in fantasy, it is nonetheless possible to recognize fairly consistently when someone has crossed it or not. However, the likelihood of any one entertainment pastime being the thing, or the moment, that tips a given individual over that line is extremely low, and so trying to design an RPG meant to prevent this seems to me to be something of a misaimed effort. Even in cars, all the safety gadgets and functions you can install do far less to prevent accidents than simple trained competence in driving; and someone who is trying to improve a dessert's nutritional content at the expense of its taste has missed the point of having desserts at all.

I think people are who they choose to be and how they approach entertainment determines how it affects them.

One of my teen goddaughters loves monster/horror movies because she wants to be a Hollywood makeup artist so she's actually read books and taken some extracurricular classes on it and, thus, always associated the "scary" things in those films with the technical know how involved. She knows it's all fake so the only effect it has is her judgment of how well the makeup/effects were done.

A couple of my nieces, by contrast have been extremely sheltered by their extremely religious mother and find even parts of Disney animated films scary.

For me, I have long ago found I am constitutionally incapable of playing evil. I am literally not wired for it. I discovered many years ago that I'm someone who will instinctively run towards danger when I see someone in trouble (my head only catching up a couple seconds later).

I tried playing Chaotic Neutral once, but the GM declared my alignment had changed to Chaotic Good by the third session. I don't typically play paladins because most fantasy settings are polytheistic and I don't enjoy even pretend worshipping false gods, but the one consistent through-line of every PC I've ever played is that they're paladins in spirit if not in class.

My favorite superhero PC is Paragon, a hero who decided to rebel against the dark vigilante and realpolitik "heroes" of the setting to try and be a super-powered Knight in Shining-Armor (complete with a golden breastplate and white cape).

For me, roleplaying is like refining who I wish to be.

The only time I'm able to run a villain at all is as a GM, where I create them to challenge the PCs and the part I look forward to most is seeing the players defeat them utterly.

I definitely think there's something to the idea that who you choose to be in the games you play is reflective of who you are, but it's a lot more nuanced than what a lot of people with agendas try to sell with ideas like "liking violent video games = likes real-life violence."

Far more common in my experience is "likes violent games = uses them as a healthy release for negative feelings they're forced to suppress in daily life" (ex. having a thankless job, bad boss, jerk customers; all of whom you have to smile and say "yes, sir/m'am" to). There's a vet I know who's game choices can be directly correlated to the difficulties he's having with the VA over his benefits.

So, yeah... there's correlations with what you pretend, but correlation =/= causation.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1122904It's a good question. It's certainly true that I've never played characters of a significantly different moral and ethical outlook from myself -- the most "ethically challenged" character I ever played was a psionically superpowered cat burglar inspired by the "Macavity" NPC idea in the first edition of GURPS Supers, who only ever stole from the idle rich who could afford the losses. Even in my AD&D1E days, when I played druid characters who in principle held a philosophically "neutral" outlook, the characters themselves always kept their word, looked out for the needy and the innocent, and only used violence in defense of their own life. And I would certainly never have played a character capable of betraying or backstabbing his allies and friends for his own benefit: not only did I know that would tick off my friends in real life to no end, the idea just had no appeal or fun for me at all. (I've never even been able to enjoy playing the game Diplomacy, because you can't win in that game without betraying allies at the right moment.)

So in practice for me, yes: in a game where I'm given my own personal druthers, I only generally "pretend to be" different versions of myself because that's where I get my enjoyment out of the game

One of the really important parts of true roleplaying is to put yourself in someone else's shoes, and make decisions based on different environmental parameters, including the influence of various Npc's.

The original Judges Guild D&D character sheets included alignment as one of the statistics that one randomly rolled up during character generation. For awhile we played that you had to play the alignment that you randomly rolled when the game began.

With original D&D alignment was always seen as a variable, not a fixed outlook on life. Characters by their actions and conduct in game determined what their current chosen alignment was, and it was up to the GM to decide if an action would change or alter the players alignments resulting in new benefits, or a lack thereof, for their characters. I have not seen any RPG game system except for Nobilis since OD&D that had built-in mechanics for dealing with variable character alignment.

I do run campaigns where characters can be evil. I don't run games that promote misery tourism, however I do want players to be able to explore especially trying circumstances, or events  that have questionable moral or ethical incidents included, so that they can learn and see for themselves the benefits of making sound ethical and moral decisions.

The last game I ran like this was an online Star Wars game in 2018 where the Players were all Sith or Imperial Troopers, and the campaign began at the conclusion of the Battle of Endor, When Darth Vader was killed by the Emperor. The players begin as loyal subjects of an Empire completely devoted to law and order, and the game begins as they learn of the Death of both the Emperor, and their leader, Darth Vader. They find they are now being hunted by Rebels, and betrayed by other Imperials. This game lasted about five months, and didn't end well, but it was a real eye opener for most of the players. What they learned was, killing each other, and harming the innocent in the name of the law during their journey to reforge the Empire was not "fun" as they had originally anticipated, and in fact it turned out to be a real chore, and a curse that hung like a millstone around their necks.

One thing I do object strenuously to, is the player that always wants to play an evil character. I find that very unsettling, and will try to discourage that behavior in favor of a more balanced approach.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1122907One of the really important parts of true roleplaying is to put yourself in someone else's shoes, and make decisions based on different environmental parameters, including the influence of various Npc's.

This actually highlights what I think is one of the key differences in approach on the topic.

As a life skill, I completely agree that learning to see things from someone else's perspective, and to understand why someone in different circumstances may make different choices from your own, is a critical part of healthy psychological and emotional development. However, the minute this is asserted to be an indispensably important and/or morally obligatory element of one's leisure entertainment, I balk. In my view, the moment something else becomes more important than the fun factor, what you're doing is no longer a game: it's a tool, which was designed for ends which may not be the consumer's. (That doesn't mean a game or story can't teach valuable lessons; it only means it has to put the entertainment first, not the teaching.)

I've always believed that the only reason one should ever need to give for refusing to play a particular game is "I don't find this fun," without requiring further explanation or justification. Anything you're obliged in any sense to do without caring about whether it's fun or not is, by definition, neither entertainment nor a game.

Thing is, there's a person playing a character, and then there's That Guy who's clearly got something loose upstairs and is trying to live out some weird fantasy using the character as an excuse.  I think a lot of us have encountered That Guy at some point in our gaming lives.  It's not hard to tell the difference between a player who's doing some kind of zany character concept and a person who keeps trying to steer into fringey territory.

Not even close, I play to get away from real life, why would I want to play myself?

I'm able to play a monster, I mean a real one not sparkly angsty vampires, because I can tell the difference between fiction and reality. In the same way I'm able to exterminate sentient being because in that game they are pure evil.

As for "That Guy" only once did I encounter someone like that in a game, was readily expelled from the group. But, I think if you play at conventions/game stores you're more likely to find it, because you can't properly vet the players and there are a lot of lunatics out there, both the SocJus Zealots and their mirror image from the monotheistic religions.

If you can't tell fantasy from reality and are unable to feel empathy towards anybody not yourself then you shouldn't be playing pretend, you should be at the minimum under therapy and probably committed to the loony bin.

I stopped watching Intervention when I realized I was getting entertainment out of other people's suffering.
Kinda sorta the same thing with L&O: SVU, except the show got so silly it wasn't worth watching anymore, anyway.

But...

I still like Rest Stop. I think everyone has their own line, and it's probably a fuzzy line at that.

I've played "evil" characters, and characters I wouldn't necessarily agree with in real life. Part of the fun is pretending to be someone who isn't like me.

One of the most fun characters I've ever played was a religious fanatic paladin, self-righteous and hypocrite, yet very heroic, paladin.

He was willing to turn a blind eye to most sins committed by the church, but also willing to sacrifice himself to save random peasants.

I played evil - sadistic - PCs in the past. It was fun, but not I'd be willing to do again, I think.

I also played righteous characters straight. And mercenaries with good tendencies. And a dwarf who was more interested in trading goods than adventuring.

I don't think this means anything about me.

The paladin could either be taking my own religious beliefs to the extreme (making me some kind of religious nut?), or making fun of religion in general (making me some kind of agnostic or cynic?).

My evil PCs mean I was an evil person in my youth, and have now reformed? I don't think so.

Most of this is exploring. Exploring characters, exploring possibilities.

It makes RPGs more fun. I have some friends who always play the same kind of character, and that gets a bit boring from time to time.

You know, like that guy who always wants to be a ninja, and when invited to play Call of Cthulhu creates an inmate escaped from the insane asylum that thinks he is a ninja?

Quote from: Eric Diaz;1122917It makes RPGs more fun. I have some friends who always play the same kind of character, and that gets a bit boring from time to time.

Yeah, this sort of thing bugs me with people I play with regularly. My brother for instance will occasionally step out of his wheelhouse or make exceptions for a given campaign style (I said this is a gritty game about war, no you cannot play an eccentric pole dancer!), but 98% of the time he plays some variant of a smarmy self-insert power fantasy with a nearly identical personality (the "walking quip"). It can get tiresome GM'ing for those types sometimes as you come to know every move they'll make before they do and it feels a bit like going through the motions. I prefer some variety in my own characters, and those of others.

That said, at the end of the day it's impossible to REALLY play a different person from yourself (at least entirely), and I don't begrudge people who just want to play themselves "but a wizard" and blow up goblins. I get that mentality. Roleplaying isn't method acting. But I like exploring different mindsets, motivations and personalities and roleplaying "seriously" whenever I can. It's not always easy to obtain but it is certainly easier in long-term campaigns where you have time to breathe and adjust, entrenching yourself in and evolving a fresh character persona over weeks and months. IMO that is where roleplaying really "comes alive" and the beginnings of campaigns I find somewhat lackluster and rocky by comparison before the group gets focused, even though new beginnings can be fun in their own right. Over the long term with the same players and characters, you get to a point where you really immerse together and things just... flow. Both campaign and character-wise.

Quote from: Eric Diaz;1122917One of the most fun characters I've ever played was a religious fanatic paladin, self-righteous and hypocrite, yet very heroic, paladin.

He was willing to turn a blind eye to most sins committed by the church, but also willing to sacrifice himself to save random peasants.

I played evil - sadistic - PCs in the past. It was fun, but not I'd be willing to do again, I think.

I also played righteous characters straight. And mercenaries with good tendencies. And a dwarf who was more interested in trading goods than adventuring.

I don't think this means anything about me.

The paladin could either be taking my own religious beliefs to the extreme (making me some kind of religious nut?), or making fun of religion in general (making me some kind of agnostic or cynic?).

My evil PCs mean I was an evil person in my youth, and have now reformed? I don't think so.

Most of this is exploring. Exploring characters, exploring possibilities.

It makes RPGs more fun. I have some friends who always play the same kind of character, and that gets a bit boring from time to time.

You know, like that guy who always wants to be a ninja, and when invited to play Call of Cthulhu creates an inmate escaped from the insane asylum that thinks he is a ninja?

What are you some kind of Ninjaphobic!? You bigot!

I can't bring myself to play evil characters. I'm the sort of person whose paladin PC would convert orcs to Christianity, adopt goblin babies, and figure out how to raise demons to angels.

Greetings!

I always enjoy riding at the right hand of Ghenghis Khan.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK