[Minor NSFW] Is there something wrong with storygamers?

[B.T.]

NSFW tag as a preemptive measure because the text I'm going to quote is pretty fucked.

I've read the RPG.net thread on Poison'd in which the playtest involved murder and throatfucking.  I have also heard of the storygame called Kill Puppies for Satan.  Then there's Apocalypse World which seemed okay, but then I learned that a good portion of the mechanics involved sex between characters.  Right there we're 0-for-3 on the scale of "games I want to play."

Now I learned about this game called Hell for Leather.  It's a storygame that is described as a "darkly gory game of pursuit and savage violence" and a "fast flowing action game of explosive death and murder."  Read an RPG.net thread that was closed because it involved characters raping, murdering, and shitting on each other.  I decided to delve a little deeper and pull up some other playtest examples for your enjoyment.

The RPG.net playtest:

The game opened wonderfully. It seemed like there was a story to tell as Soaring Bear and Fleet As Monkey pecked for distinction, while Hiding Turkey lay against a tree, bruised from her lover's temper, and the old Wiseman chewed on a mysterious "dreamroot." The premise was simple. These four heroes, the last legs of the incumbent ruling family, were to be summoned for their execution. They decided to flee the tribe before they were called, and to make a journey to the great Eagle God to seek the oracle and speak with the spirits of old. Etc.

Checkpoint 1, the long story short: Race through the Lands of the Raven. Great forests. Frothing rivers. Buffalo charges.

But after that, filth and bile spewed forth from the narrative like a bad vomit. We murdered an old sage, showered in his warm blood—spilled from the arteries at his feet—and while the blood caked on our faces, we tripped out for three weeks on the poison of the local toads.

This went on for ages. I mean it. We wanted it to stop, but we kept failing Challenges. Over and over, all our characters were covered in more shit, piss and blood, drinking more and more poison, and doing more and more killing, until finally we could escape, strung out, quivering and stinking like dying dogs.

Kill the Pig, Bash him in!
All sense of our dysfunctionality was abandoned when Hiding Turkey slaughtered the children of the High Priestess before her, made her watch, and then slit her throat like a pig. To persuade the High Priest to co-operate, the Wiseman tore open the High Priest's innards and pulled out his liver—while he was still breathing—spitting "you're of no more fucking use to us now, you dying, old, fucking cocksucker."

I'm not a religious man, but Jesus Christ! You know the worst part? It was fucking hilarious. We were all crying with laughter, slapping our thighs, wheezing. It was horrific. Writing this I practically hear ourselves beating out a dreadful chant "Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!"

We got our comeuppance. Hiding Turkey had her head removed after trying to blackmail a tribal warrior with a piece of woven propaganda (a tapestry of a man with a tiny cock), Fleet As Monkey got unexpectedly savaged by a crocodile, Dancing Fox got a tomahawk embedded in his skull after challenging Chief Running Hawk to a duel, and finally Soaring Bear was peppered with javelins. He dropped to his knees, half of his head burnt off, shit and blood dangling off him in threads, laughing and screaming in total, debauched madness. Ghaaaarlllguglh...

Some others:

One of the great things about the game was the way it provoked acts of sheer gruesomeness. I'm not sure if this is actually 'good', but it was certainly entertaining. Having my irredeemably awful TV journalist Clyde Bumstead emasculated by an enraged thirteen year old Vietnamese boy was a moment of pathos, drama, and a man getting his cock cut off. And deservedly so. Bumstead was a dick. But he did carry his severed penis around in the pocket of his safari suit until he was blown apart by a T-34 tank. Dignity in death, that's what HFL is all about.

Where we were mowed down by the Russian Army while torturing and killing the head conductor's family (and dog!) to get the, uhm, key to the TSE out of him. We all died in the same roll, and boy did we deserve it.

Within a few moments, with a load of shit rolls on all parts (the nerves get you pretty bad), Martina Mitchell met her death. Susan knocked over the Heat stack with a clumsy roll, and that was the beginning of the end. Susan described how she ran across the glass rooftop of the mansion's ballroom, cracked it with her manly physique, and plummeted to her death, speared first by a U.S. flagpole, and then guillotined by the falling shards of glass. Yuck.

For a little while, we pulled it back, as Li Jae Dong dispatched of the camera crew from the rooftop, secured us a van and drove hell-for-leather to the bank. Hank stepped out too soon (after knocking down the Heat stack at 9 dice), and straight away got a sniper shot to the face. His head popped like a melon. Ka-splat.

With only Daniel still in the game, the Heat was at 5 and he needed 5 successes. Li Jae Dong snuck into the bank, stole the money, shot a guy in the balls, fled to the port, robbed a fishing trawler, killed some Irish drunks and fled back to Korea to found his own private army. Somehow he managed it. He got the Heat up to 11. 11 little d6s, stacked on top of one another, wavering in the breeze, and he did it! Amazing.

The game really kicked off with the second scene, where a bin lorry was stolen and driven through the Network blockade. There followed the theft of the new Virgin Hovertrans hovercraft, being launched by an elderly Richard Branson, a bloated Pamela Anderson, and the re-animated corpse of Jade Goody. The guidelines for violence (level 2: must include descriptions of at least one bodily fluid) made this rather nasty, as Pamela Anderson exploded, drenching everyone with saline solution.

There were many good scenes in this game. One which stood out for me was poor old Kinnock attempting to get into a low-class brothel housed in a former Woolworths in Doncaster. In order to get in he was ordered to "Lick that tramp clean" by a bouncer. The horror, the horror. It also later led to the utterance "Look, you've licked a tramp, I've fucked a Ukrainian (on his mothers side)"

Uh...maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't want to play in a game like this.  Are storygamers just fucked in the head?

[crkrueger]

Are storygamers just fucked in the head?

Some certainly are.  Then again, FATAL and RaHoWa are pretty traditional rpgs, not storygames.  Then again, I don't know that anyone has ever played "F&R" while the storygames based on sex and violence do seem to be very popular with the storygaming crowd.

[VectorSigma]

I don't know anything about this game, but it sounds mostly like some kind of "escalating violence" system with an implicit "live by the sword, die by the sword" through-line.

It sounds awful.

Note especially how it seems from the quoted descriptions that much of the time the players don't have much choice in what happens (save the description), which seems to me to be the precise opposite of what most storygames claim to try to achieve.

[Cranewings]

I don't know. Lots of people root for Jason and Freddy, just like lots of people like to slaughter innocents in sandbox mode in GTA. There is a huge gap between choice of entertainment and stories, and real criminal activity.

Just because you find the subject distasteful doesn't mean there is anything more wrong with the people enjoying it than any movie or song with a perverse topic.

[crkrueger]

Looking at some rule excerpts, it seems more like a party game then anything else (of course most storygames really are party game one-shots), if you fail a particular challenge with the stupid dice tower, then you have to narrate some kind of crazy shit happening with the more you fail by, the more off-the-wall grindhouse it gets.  It seems like this game is more of a b-movie simulator where you can relive classics like "Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except: When Violence Demands Revenge".

[B.T.]

I don't know. Lots of people root for Jason and Freddy, just like lots of people like to slaughter innocents in sandbox mode in GTA. There is a huge gap between choice of entertainment and stories, and real criminal activity.

Just because you find the subject distasteful doesn't mean there is anything more wrong with the people enjoying it than any movie or song with a perverse topic.

I think there's a large gulf between "shooting people in a videogame" and "creatively narrating that we capture an underage boy, slit his throat, and violate the corpse."

[Cranewings]

I think there's a large gulf between "shooting people in a videogame" and "creatively narrating that we capture an underage boy, slit his throat, and violate the corpse."

No there isn't. You just put more value on a little boy in a table top rpg than a grown whore in GTA. I've killed a LOT of hookers in GTA and I feel I have literally no propensity to do that in real life. Even if playing an RPG increases your urge to rape someone 1000 fold, it is still 1000 times 0.

One of the biggest arguments against story games being fun on this site is that story gamers are anti-immersion. I'd argue that a story gamer describing someone raping a corps says less about their personality than a traditional RPGer imposing his 5th level will on a bunch of 1st level mooks.

[B.T.]

I've killed a LOT of hookers in GTA and I feel I have literally no propensity to do that in real life. Even if playing an RPG increases your urge to rape someone 1000 fold, it is still 1000 times 0.

Which, of course, is not at all what I'm implying.

[kryyst]

Reads like a bunch of people having fucked up fun.  It's just not what I would call fun or gaming or really entertaining.   So what.

Hell if someone had a tape recorder to some of our gaming sessions and only selectively quoted certain things ours would sound really messed up to when taken out of context etc...etc...etc....

[jeff37923]

Uh...maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't want to play in a game like this.  Are storygamers just fucked in the head?

It isn't just you. I find this to be pretty representative of storygames and think that people who enjoy this kind of gaming are pretty fucked in the head. I agree with the distinction between a storygame and a role-playing game because I do not want this typically juvenile violent misery tourism to be representative of the hobby I enjoy.

[Nicephorus]

I think part of it is a deliberate attempt to be edgy and seeking out controversial topics for games taht will spark outcry and discussion, thus free publicity.

[DKChannelBoredom]

It isn't just you. I find this to be pretty representative of storygames and think that people who enjoy this kind of gaming are pretty fucked in the head. I agree with the distinction between a storygame and a role-playing game because I do not want this typically juvenile violent misery tourism to be representative of the hobby I enjoy.

I feel pretty much opposite, that it doesn't represent storygames at all. Sure there are some fucked up people out there, indulging in edgier-than-thou types of games that will play fucked up storygames, just as there are fucked up catpiss men playing ordinary roleplaying games in a fucked up way. Maybe the former are just more into showing off their shit on the web.

I know many people playing story games, and they are perfectly normal, and also play normal rpgs, and don't indulge in dumbass sex'n'violence shit like described in the OP, at all.

There will be a minority of freaks in most hobbies.

[jeff37923]

I feel pretty much opposite, that it doesn't represent storygames at all. Sure there are some fucked up people out there, indulging in edgier-than-thou types of games that will play fucked up storygames, just as there are fucked up catpiss men playing ordinary roleplaying games in a fucked up way. Maybe the former are just more into showing off their shit on the web.

I know many people playing story games, and they are perfectly normal, and also play normal rpgs, and don't indulge in dumbass sex'n'violence shit like described in the OP, at all.

There will be a minority of freaks in most hobbies.

I get where you are coming from, the problem is that the vocal minority of freaks in our hobby are the ones who become representative of our hobby to the general public.

[DKChannelBoredom]

I get where you are coming from, the problem is that the vocal minority of freaks in our hobby are the ones who become representative of our hobby to the general public.

Very true. I just feel that the outrage about crazy gamers, storygamers and regular roleplayers, 99% of the time comes from our own group and hobby and in general we should instead be able to shrug it off with a "yeah, fucking freaks" and move on. Because the answer to the question in the title of the thread, is "no" 99 times out of a 100. And, luckily, people from outside of the hobby very rarely comes across the outrageous minority, whether it be extreme misery tourists or insane batshit crazy D&D edition-crusaders.

[One Horse Town]

I think part of it is a deliberate attempt to be edgy and seeking out controversial topics for games taht will spark outcry and discussion, thus free publicity.

Yep. That sort of crap is a nice cover for a lack of talent on the part of the author.