The SA In Games Thread (Good Luck)

Kestrel

@Tez said:

@Shygaming said:

Am I keeping sexual assault as something that can happen in the game? Yes.

…At the same time I think difficult subject matter can have a place in a dark setting when it is being used as part of the story rather than treated as fetish content.

I think allowing that kind of material adds more to the setting than removing it entirely. It can create serious consequences. It can create grudges and conflict between characters. It can also make the world feel genuinely unpleasant in places which is appropriate for the sort of setting I am trying to build.

I actually think you have a point. I just think it will be very very very hard to manage. I’ve tossed this around in my head and with some friends on a number of points, from this to RP about various historical (and current) *isms.

I think we lose something killing it all. We also kill a few headaches. IDK. It’s about where you put your time and energy.

Okay now you can fight me too, fam.

This is generally how I feel about homophobia, racism, and sexism in game settings.

I don’t have anything against games and their developers who’ve chosen to exclude these themes entirely from their settings. I get why they’re doing it. I share the political motives. If someone was being sexist OOC, I’d ban them. If someone casually dropped the n-word even IC, I’d ban them too, because even if the setting includes racism there are just more tasteful ways to write about it.

But I think that stories about struggle in an unequal universe can be cathartic, empowering, and add texture to the in-game politics. I also think there are ways to go about RPing these stories that make it clear that you, the player, do not hold or endorse the views being presented. For instance if I’m playing an old-fashioned witch-hunter who fears what he doesn’t understand, and distrusts women with magical power, surely it’s generally clear that I, the player, am not saying women shouldn’t be allowed to have magic? I’m presenting this character as a foil so that you can tell your stories about being a badass witch who scares men who lack her power.

I don’t want to name names in this instance because I’d be naming people whose games and staffing and reasons I really respect, but I’ve played in a number of spaces over the years where I, as a … [rolls out long list of protected characteristics] felt like there was just something kind of hollow and missing about not being able to write about these experiences, especially where they actually happen to be incredibly relevant to some sort of historical/allegorical setting.

Third Eye

@Pyrephox said:

I think there’s a difference between allowing IC sexual assault (or other taboo) content, and providing code that allows one player to expose another to that content without their OOC consent.

Yeah, I think these are two pretty separate conversations. I’m largely ambivalent to sexual assault themes as just part of RP, except that I think they’re frequently poorly-handled. But it’s up to staff how much they want to deal with that. Your game doesn’t get totally taken over by that because one PC runs a personal plot involving SA imo.

If you’re taking the time to code a whole system for something then I assume it’s a focus of RP that’s going to come up a lot and attract people who are on the game for that.

Yam

I want everyone’s opinion of what counts as gritty realism GO

Kestrel

@Yam said:

So unfortunately I do think that kind of by nature of having systems in your game that allow SA, it’s going to attract people that want to engage with it, for better or worse.

@pyrephox already touched on this, but I think that the issue with coded systems is that they basically become an item on a menu.

Like if I’m playing in a sci-fi setting, maybe I want to be a cool hacker/engineer type. And left to my own devices I’d just RP pretend hacker things like idk, joining my fellow hackers in typing together on the same keyboard and whispering “I’m in …”

But if there is code that lets me hack a door, specifically, then of course I’m now gonna wanna RP hacking open doors and explorin the grid more than I would’ve thought to do if I were just freeform RPing that hacker life. Now me and all my hacker friends are gonna be busting into everyone’s private offices and bedrooms because it’s an option on the menu, and we said yes please. If you only wanted door-hacking to be possible in theory, but not be a daily occurrence and part of the core gameplay loop, then just leave door-hacking RP undefined, up to player discretion and ST rolls, and players won’t think about it unless the story actually calls for it.

Haven’s staff has on occasion tried to justify a lot of the sex code stuff as being a fair arbiter of stuff that players would otherwise do anyway, but abusively. For instance, I’m playing Jill. Jack just dumped me. That’s unacceptable so I declare I’m pregnant with Jack’s baby, and if anyone disagrees then they’re trying to murder my baby, and also of course Jack is a bad guy for having knocked me up and then abandoned me. So Haven’s staff says you can’t just troll people with pregnancy drama, code is the arbiter of whether Jill is pregnant or not, and it requires Jack to have been actively involved in that process.

Obviously there are two problems here which are …

Now that there’s pregnancy code, breeding kink types are more interested in the game and play it for that.
Why tf wouldn’t you just moderate players trolling with obnoxious pregnancy drama or have some kind of policy that it requires consent from both IC parents?

Extend this to all the rape stuff etc. Sure, “rape exists in this setting”, I’m in theory fine with depending on how it’s handled. But “rape is a labelled, coded, widely advertised item on this menu”, then I don’t think you can be surprised rapists are lining up down the street for your restaurant.

Roz

@Yam said:

I want everyone’s opinion of what counts as gritty realism GO

everyone’s parents have now been murdered. Revenge Orphan MUSH

hellfrog

I know cnc is a very common fantasy, and as a fantasy, I think adults should have a place they can indulge in that without being demonized or exploited. Purity culture is dangerous.

But SA as a narrative device is overused, (personally) distracting, annoying, often offensive, and I’m tired of it. Totally fine with one. Do not want the other, particularly from amateurs who are giving about 15 seconds of thought to the narrative in question.

sao

I think about this sometimes because by isolating sexual assault as something we just don’t do, we protect survivors from encountering it unexpectedly, but it also means that if a survivor’s story is going to be told it’s gonna be allegorical. It does bum me out a little that there are whole topics we just have to avoid out of… the necessity of the commons, can we handle this with randos.

IDK. IDK! It’s become a cheap storytelling hack for so many shitty writers to add angst / depth / occasionally even manpain, but on the other hand overcoming your abuser is a really powerful story potentially that we can’t tap.

With that said, I agree that MUSHes generally probably can’t handle it.

catzilla

Maybe I’m being too pearl clutch-y, but I don’t want SA in my games (for the most part). If it’s part of someone’s background or whatever, fine. I don’t want my PCs involved with it, I don’t want it being something the STs can do to PCs.

ETA because hellfrog’s post, CNC is fine because it’s two consenting adults. However, again I might be clutching my pearls too tightly but I don’t want that in my online games that aren’t specifically sex games or games where dealing with that sort of trauma is a theme.

It does pose the slippery slope thing. Again, I know how conservative talking point that sounds. There was literally someone in one of the linked reddit posts in the Haven thread talking about pedophilia being okay on a game because it’s two consenting adults behind the screen.

I dunno. I just want to play a werewolf chasing spirits (or whatever fantasy/etc game it is) and not have to worry about other PCs/NPC/STs SAing my character.

Third Eye

@sao said:
With that said, I agree that MUSHes generally probably can’t handle it.

If you want to tell stories revolving around sexual assault you have to be willing, as a staffer, to acknowledge that you’ll also be devoting your time to litigating player disputes about it and wading through content where it was badly-handled enough to drift up to you and cause drama.

This isn’t really how I want to spend my time. If someone does, like I said, I’m ambivalent about it. A game that allows those themes isn’t a red flag for me. But running these games takes pretty intense emotional labor and everyone is figuring out how to manage that in ways that keep them engaged. Not wanting being the rape RP conflict-solver to be a part of your day is all it usually is when SA is singled-out as something that’s not a part of day-to-day RP. That’s what it is for me, at least, I don’t think I’m a pearl-clutcher.

ETA: And, like I said above, I do think more games where this kind of content is fine exist than is generally apparent here. Whether or not they’re places this audience wants to play is another question, but nobody’s gonna make My Ideal Game but me, and sometimes not even then.

Kestrel

@catzilla said:

I don’t want SA in my games (for the most part) CNC is fine because it’s two consenting adults […] It does pose the slippery slope thing

I personally want SA to exist in the game’s setting, like I don’t want to pretend we live in some utopia where it just doesn’t happen anymore. I err strongly on the side of not wanting it to happen on-screen. An example I’d be completely fine with is if, for example, our adventuring party is welcomed into a NPC nobleman’s hall. He greets our party, has a feast prepared for us, a quest to offer, and it’s in our best interests to befriend him. Then he introduces us to his teenage bride, young enough to be his daughter, who looks despondent and dissociative.

If here you’re squicked out and would nope out of the setting immediately that’s fine, ydy, I get why you feel that way.

Personally, I like this kind of story because to me it makes the setting a lot more real, morally complex, and interesting. Now it raises our stakes on what the characters should do, it gives them an opportunity to try and be heroes if they want to, to investigate the situation, or to choose inaction and commiserate/despair together at the sad state of this setting. But it complicates the simplicity of “yeah let’s take his quest and feast in his hall and he seems like a really great guy”. IMO it does so much more effectively than giving him a more fantastical flaw like, he’s secretly consorting with demons in his basement and plotting to kill the king or whatever. The former presented situation is instantly more real and it tells you about how power works politically here.

Where I’m actually less comfortable is CNC between players. I go back and forth on whether I’d allow it on a game I made. Sure, in theory, if two adult players consent to their rape fantasy RP then it’s none of my business, but:

If other player characters find out this happened, now it is our business.
I would never want to be in a position as staff to mediate whether someone was telling the truth about a rape scene being OOCly premeditated.
I never want to be unwittingly seated in the proverbial cuck chair of someone’s fetish scenario, especially (and this has literally happened to me) if part of their fantasy involves roping in a white knight to shower them with sympathy and fight some villain for their honour. A villain they asked to do this who is probably their OOC friend or whatever.

So I lean towards it being far better to just disallow between characters altogether, and that if it is allowed, it needs a very clearly demarcated opt-in consent system that covers not just participants, but also any witnesses/confidants, similar to Silent Heaven’s consent checklist. Like if you wanna consent to having your bodice ripped, fine, but I didn’t consent to listening to your character cry about your OOC kinks.

Roz

game staff are in the position of basically needing to be available to potentially arbitrate whatever content they allow on their game. so if a game’s staff doesn’t want to deal with a particular topic, they should feel free to disallow it. game themes are naturally exclusionary: every game has to define what it’s about and what’s allowed there, and that includes everything from “no guns in our medieval-esque fantasy game” to “none of this particular topic that is likely to need to be arbitrated eventually that i don’t personally want to arbitrate.”

i think decisions like that can be made alongside the acknowledgment that this is just one gamerunner deciding what they want to deal with on their game, and not a statement about whether it’s okay for two adults to RP a thing. it doesn’t have to be a judgment or condemnation.