[Minor NSFW] Is there something wrong with storygamers?

[misterguignol]

Your premise is conveniently impossible, since there aren't any "popular" Storygames.

It's worth noting that "popular" was the word you used.  He even quoted it directly.  The premise is yours, son.

[DominikSchwager]

Besides there are enough storygames that have sold in the thousands like BW, DFRPG or DitV.

[DKChannelBoredom]

Besides there are enough storygames that have sold in the thousands like BW, DFRPG or DitV.

But not even Pundit considers Burning Wheel a story game? And neither BW nor DitV have a focus on perversion, whatsoever.

[jhkim]

I can't recall a single game session of my teenage-years of AD&D where we sodomized dead cabin boys.

OK, do you claim that no one else did anything equivalent?  For example, here's a "Rape in RPGs" article that refers to a number of people's experiences with in-game rape.  In another article, Jennifer Brandes and Chris Hepler describe some experiences:

A friend of ours, who now works in the gaming industry, was not three hours into her first AD&D session when one party member declared he was raping her. Rather than stopping him, all four other party members joined in. To this day, this woman will not play a female character. We only wonder that she ever played a second session.
    Another friend of ours describes a game that "I was lucky to get out of when I did." On the night after she left, the party got arrested by the city watch. After throwing the PCs into separate cells, the male gamemaster had the guards rape every female character. The women left in tears and never returned to roleplaying, while, as our friend described incredulously, "the GM never understood what he did wrong."
    In yet another game, a friend of ours ended up playing the self-described "town slut." Though this was not a role she wanted, she had felt so pressured that she "ended up giving it away before someone tried to take it."
    These three examples are from three different states (New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland) in three different decades (late '70s, mid-'80s and 1997), yet describe disturbingly similar situations.

I've heard plenty of stories of screwed-up stuff happening in-game - and the above stories to me are worse than sodomizing a corpse, because raping a player's character is likely to set off out-of-game triggers.  

But not even Pundit considers Burning Wheel a story game? And neither BW nor DitV have a focus on perversion, whatsoever.

Right.  That's the point.  Popular titles in the story games crowd are games like BW and DitV, not the perverse games.  Specifically, Pundit claimed in post #22 that "That whole "non-representative isolated incident" argument sure starts to wear rather thin once you have approach a list of a dozen or so popular Storygames that are filled with morally repugnant grotesquerie and sexual degeneracy, doesn't it?"  When asked to name those dozen "popular Storygames", though, he claimed it was impossible since story games aren't popular.

[Claudius]

But not even Pundit considers Burning Wheel a story game? And neither BW nor DitV have a focus on perversion, whatsoever.

I don't know about the Pundit, but according to me, Burning Wheel is not a storygame by any stretch of the imagination.

[StormBringer]

The thing is, as you quoted me saying, while we both understand that there is a distinction because we are familiar with gaming, the general public only has a image of gamers based on stereotypes that we try to disprove as authentic.

Which would you rather have people talk about or read about, things that would leave a positive impression about gaming or things that would leave a negative impression about gaming?

I am going to have to go with this one.

Are there still furries out there that are simply interested in pretending to be a fox or acat and like cuddle piles?  Obviously.  But what do most people see when they do a Google search (gods help them, with safe search off)?  A giant, masturbating she-male zebra with six enormous breasts flooding a valley of ridiculously hung horse-males with ejaculate.

Even knowing ahead of time that most furries put no more effort into it than cat ears and a tail from Wal-mart (or that the more serious are just a subset of cosplayers), which image do you suppose is really going to stay in their minds?

[The Butcher]

I've heard plenty of stories of screwed-up stuff happening in-game - and the above stories to me are worse than sodomizing a corpse, because raping a player's character is likely to set off out-of-game triggers.  

It's the Thomas Covenant syndrome: since it's "just a game", people will do it. I've seen it back when I was 13 and gaming outside my regular group, e.g. running pick-up games at the FLGS. Some idiots did it to NPCs, but never to other PCs... hell, this one time I even had a female player playing a female character abuse a captive. :eek:

It's certainly not my cup of tea. But I've seen it happen in traditional RPGs as well. Granted it's not as central as it seems to be for games like Hell For Leather, or Poison'd; but it does happen.

[Nicephorus]

I think a few designers try too hard to be edgy.  But I don't think it defines story games or indie games.  I also don't think it's limited to story games or even rpgs.  Every media has people who try to push the boundary further for notoriety and some of them find that they've gone so far that almost no one is interested.

[Imperator]

That whole "non-representative isolated incident" argument sure starts to wear rather thin once you have approach a list of a dozen or so popular Storygames that are filled with morally repugnant grotesquerie and sexual degeneracy, doesn't it?

You cannot name a dozen storygames focused on that, popular or not. You are just full of shit.

The most popular storygames out there have no focus whatsoever on sex, violence or any other thing that is not also in traditional games.

If you will note in the quote of mine I did not say anything regarding write about or filming. I was specifically mentioning playing a game.

But what is the difference? All of them are imaginary activities in which horrible things happen to imaginary people.

Anthony Hopkins has been saying for years that Hannibal Lecter is one of his most favourite characters. Does that mean that he is a potential cannibal psychopath? No, but he enjoyed playing such a guy.

If I'm a big horror film buff, I like to see imaginary people suffering horrible fates, and probably I will root for the monster / psycho most times. And that doesn't mean that I would enjoy killin co-eds at a summer camp, or whatever.
I don't mind if you disagree with me, I just mind it when you disagree with something I didn't say and try to attribute it to me.

The thing is, as you quoted me saying, while we both understand that there is a distinction because we are familiar with gaming, the general public only has a image of gamers based on stereotypes that we try to disprove as authentic.

Which would you rather have people talk about or read about, things that would leave a positive impression about gaming or things that would leave a negative impression about gaming?

While I see where you come from and I think that indeed you have a point, I wouldn't think that a non-gamer is going to find those examples of play without also perceiving that the majority of gamers are not into that or directly despise that.

Again, I don't want that games to be the main representation of the hobby, but I can't seriously think that we are atany rsk of that happening anytime soon.

[two_fishes]

Your premise is conveniently impossible, since there aren't any "popular" Storygames.

Poison'd isn't popular, even compared to other storygames, although as others have pointed out, there are indeed popular games out of the storygame RPG crowd. But you shy away from namimg your supposed dozen because you know that it's bullshit hyperbole. As for defending repugnant games, I see a whole thread here on this forum of people defending Dark Heresy. I'm sure HoL (i.e.  Human Occupied Landfill) has plenty of fans. There are people who like and defend Carcossa.

A minority of game designers make games in bad taste, irrespective of the genre. You don't like the storygamer RPG crowd, so you want to paint the whole group with the actions of the most perverse few. That you then equivocate when it's pointed out that traditional RPGs can easily be painted with the same brush is hypocrisy, but you're no stranger to that, are you?

[VectorSigma]

I think the difference is in the amount of attention paid to games with bizarre or over-the-top themes.

If I publish a trad rpg, "Goatfuckers Inc.", about the pulp adventures of people who get magic powers by fucking goats, people see it and roll their eyes; there might be a post of "wtf have you seen this lol" and it fades into obscurity.

If I publish a storygame called "Capricorn: Forbidden Desires" and make a big stink about the joint character creation and the innovative mechanic that simulates escalating jealousy-based relationships within a four-way-open-goat-marriage, then at some point there's going to be a thread condemning it, three threads supporting the "elegant, heartbreaking mechanics", and a couple "Sell Me On" and "C:FD ++" threads, to be closely followed by "can C:FD do Star Wars" and "I like the Capricorn setting, but I'm gonna use Wushu".

[Peregrin]

Actually, there is a correlation between exposure to violent media and increased violence. There have been enough longitudinal studies to demonstrate that the effect is probably causal. It's a complex link with provisos but there is definitely a link. I'm not advocating anything but it's ridiculous that people keep repeating the old lie that there is no correlation.

Actually actually, a Harvard duo of psychiatrists found most, if not all, of those studies to contain bias and have not definitively proven a causal link.  In fact, the only conclusion they could come to is that if a young person does not play any video-games at all, they are more likely to be socially maladjusted because video-games, no matter how violent, are a common means of socialization for young people.

The markers they identified as potential problems show that concentrating on the violent content as a means of judging whether the game will cause dysfunctional behavior is misguided and doesn't actually represent where potential problems with media and games comes from.

Also consider that violent youth crime has dropped since the introduction of these violent games, and that the most horrific violence enacted by young adults and teens often involved a subject who already had dysfunctional behavior apart from their interest in games (the Vtech shooter played absolutely no video games).

Ultimately, even if there is a small causal link (and there has not one been proven that has been accepted by the scientific or academic community at large), I would question what the usefulness of such a study is when more consistent markers for problems other than violent content have been identified.  I mean you bitch about video-gamers shrugging off such studies, but when Harvard does as well, and there's no mainstream concensus?  What do you expect people to do?  Accept these studies when people more qualified than themselves don't?

[One Horse Town]

A minority of game designers make games in bad taste, irrespective of the genre.

What happens when that minority of designers are the most visible within their genre?

[StormBringer]

I think the difference is in the amount of attention paid to games with bizarre or over-the-top themes.

If I publish a trad rpg, "Goatfuckers Inc.", about the pulp adventures of people who get magic powers by fucking goats, people see it and roll their eyes; there might be a post of "wtf have you seen this lol" and it fades into obscurity.

If I publish a storygame called "Capricorn: Forbidden Desires" and make a big stink about the joint character creation and the innovative mechanic that simulates escalating jealousy-based relationships within a four-way-open-goat-marriage, then at some point there's going to be a thread condemning it, three threads supporting the "elegant, heartbreaking mechanics", and a couple "Sell Me On" and "C:FD ++" threads, to be closely followed by "can C:FD do Star Wars" and "I like the Capricorn setting, but I'm gonna use Wushu".

:hatsoff:
Clearly, you are the omnipotent deity of the internets.  Allow me to construct a shrine in your name.  

[two_fishes]

What happens when that minority of designers are the most visible within their genre?

Do you believe this somehow indicates that there is somehting wrong with people who like storygamer RPGs as a whole? If one designer makes one fairly innocuous game that is very popular, and one or two small, repugnant games that remain largely unsold--all the people who liked the first, fairly innocuous game are perverts?

I mean, that is the thrust of this thread, right? That there is something wrong with fans of storygame RPGs as a whole.