The SA In Games Thread (Good Luck)
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The same is true more broadly. A kidnapping story where the hostage wants to be kidnapped is not really a kidnapping story. A horror story where the victim wants to be hunted is something else entirely. A dystopia where everyone genuinely enjoys being oppressed has lost the thing that made it dystopian.
I feel disgusted for even having to ask this, but let’s follow this to the conclusion you seem to be hinting at: Do you want players of your game to feel like they’re being r*ped?
If not, please describe the what you’re hoping players experience when someone r*pes their character.
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This is probably where I’m going to bow out because, yeah, you’re right about the fundamental disagreement.
What I’m going for isn’t really collaborative storytelling in the sense you’re describing. I don’t want every major outcome negotiated between the players involved. I want a game where the world, the mechanics and other characters can impose outcomes on you that you didn’t choose.
That is not going to be for everyone. I completely accept that.
I think collaborative RP where everyone is making sure everyone else gets the kind of story they want can be lovely. It just isn’t the experience I’m trying to build.
What you want is PvP. You can just say that.
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I don’t expect shy to come back and engage with the thread. I feel like they’ve stated their position and dipped.
But what I’m not clear on is if people will actually know what they are potentially signing up for when they join the game.
Not knowing is wild to me. I don’t think you can responsibly engage with SA, *isms, etc. as content in RP without people fully knowing what they are signing up for and consenting to engage in it. That is so foundational to how I engage with games. Even in PVP games. Even in Limited Consent games. Even in Non Consent games. You know what you are signing up for.
I don’t think you can responsibly RP about these things without that.
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I don’t expect shy to come back and engage with the thread. I feel like they’ve stated their position and dipped.
But what I’m not clear on is if people will actually know what they are potentially signing up for when they join the game.
Not knowing is wild to me. I don’t think you can responsibly engage with SA, *isms, etc. as content in RP without people fully knowing what they are signing up for and consenting to engage in it. That is so foundational to how I engage with games. Even in PVP games. Even in Limited Consent games. Even in Non Consent games. You know what you are signing up for.
I don’t think you can responsibly RP about these things without that.
I’m pretty sure you get some kind of warning about how bad things might happen to your character when you create a character, but I don’t recall how explicitly it’s stated.
My gut instinct (mostly because Shy posted this to an Armageddon forum, and just refused to answer the question someone posed about if there’s S.A. in the game) is that it’s probably not explicitly written out that your PC might get assaulted like that, and that you have to make the connection based on a general “this is a non-consent game” policy and the coded capability to do the thing.
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Calling it wish fulfilment is wild. I had my character attacked at sea, drowned, swallowed by a whale, and kept trapped in an underwater dimension for a week at one point, none of which I wish to experience IRL, nor did I require control over the story, or need to know what was going to happen in order to enjoy it.
But I went along with it because a friend of mine was running the story, I happen to trust them, and was feeling fatigued enough with the main grid at the time to say “hey fyi if you wanna see this through don’t feel bad about keeping me off-grid for a bit, I could use a break anyway”.
On a separate occasion, a friend of mine actually killed my character. It turned out neither of us actually intended the outcome, because they’d emoted attacking, I’d mistakenly interpreted their intention as killing the character (which would’ve been a rational consequence for the action I’d taken), so I emoted dying, they OOCly went “wtf I didn’t mean it like that”, I responded “lol oops”, they said, “hang on I can contrive a way to resurrect you” and I said “nah dw I’m good, this is a good ending for the character”.
The wish being fulfilled here is for a good story that everyone involved enjoys. Everyone should wish for that, it’s the point of storytelling! It’s actually super not necessary, even in a story where the outcome isn’t predetermined, and conflict between characters is permitted without prior consent, to have any party involved be OOCly miserable.
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@Shygaming said:
Can you imagine how compelling The Handmaid’s Tale would have been if all the women were actually secretly into what was happening to them? If everyone in Gilead had enthusiastically consented then you have not made the story safer. You have removed the entire point of the story.The same is true more broadly. A kidnapping story where the hostage wants to be kidnapped is not really a kidnapping story. A horror story where the victim wants to be hunted is something else entirely. A dystopia where everyone genuinely enjoys being oppressed has lost the thing that made it dystopian.
buddy i don’t know how to tell you that the CHARACTERS are not the same thing as the PLAYERS. the CHARACTERS are not secretly into it. the CHARACTERS are experiencing a horrific nonconsensual trauma.
if you think that a player cannot happily RP a thing that their character is horrified or traumatized by — sorry, but that’s a skill issue.
and, again, you are still going to be attracting players who are into the CNC aspect! you have built tools for it. they will still have their kinky fun. CNC refers to the PLAYERS engaging consensually with the topic, not the characters. it’s non-diegetic kink.
it’s just that this overall perspective actually prioritizes players who are into inflicting stuff specifically on those who don’t want it. they want the other PLAYER to feel violated, not the characters.
so it’s just like — you are disdaining the players who might enjoy this together but in a way i guess you find icky?? But you are enabling the players whose goal is actually OOC harm.
you should much prefer having the CNC kink players to the latter.
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the myth of consensual SA rp. isn’t there someone we forgot to ask
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I did some thread surgery to remove Jumpscare as looking like the originator of this thread. Apologies to anyone who was disrupted by that.
ETA: Previous thread here: https://brandmu.day/topic/690/paroxysm-split-off
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Calling it wish fulfilment is wild. I had my character attacked at sea, drowned, swallowed by a whale, and kept trapped in an underwater dimension for a week at one point, none of which I wish to experience IRL, nor did I require control over the story, or need to know what was going to happen in order to enjoy it.
to be fair, it can be wish fulfillment in the sense that people are into the topics in a fictional setting that they don’t want to happen IRL; that would just mean the wish being fulfilled is doing RP/story around the concepts. you can find folks happily kinking on any of those scenarios. these can just be masochism, breathplay, vore, and confinement
which is, again, why i think it’s silly for a line to get drawn around the idea of not wanting CNC kinky players to enjoy the noncon RP in a kinky way. like, buddy, people kink on all types of horror a whole lot
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Finally, someone who uses PvP semantically correctly but incorrectly in every other way.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
@Faraday said:
Pavel is probably right
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@Kestrel It’s gonna be okay.
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Quick someone tell me what CVC is and why I should care about this new term. I am not making any apology for any of this.
My preferred term is playfighty.
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@Meg Character vs Character as opposed to Player vs Player.
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@Tez I figured that out right after I posted, but now I think it’s funnier never to know.
Sorry, I don’t understand and I can’t read.
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buddy i don’t know how to tell you that the CHARACTERS are not the same thing as the PLAYERS. the CHARACTERS are not secretly into it. the CHARACTERS are experiencing a horrific nonconsensual trauma.
it isn’t a misunderstanding. it’s such a hardcore RPI community thing, blurring the identity line and doing it deliberately, in the name of “realism and immersion” or what have you, and 1000% of the time it is crazy toxic and weird. we’ve had other visitors with this mindset on display and it really is a fundamental difference in how games have been approached for a long time.
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@Kestrel Okay, this made me laugh loudly enough that I then had to explain the thread (carefully, my kid is in the room too) to Blu, and then read through the form. Brava.
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I could care less about what kind of role play consenting adults engage in behind closed doors.
If people are doing SA role play ethically imo nobody will even know who doesn’t want to know.
I also don’t mind dark stories (with full consent of everyone involved) that include the existence of SA from the view point of fighting evil and saving victims.
SA role play being forced into role play by coded game mechanics is gross. Even with the option of fading to black I find it icky. That player still has to deal with the consequences of SA. Just because someone is okay with SA entering role play in some circumstances doesn’t mean they want that storyline with any person who pulls out the SA dice.
Having that code is likely to attract players who enjoy forcing past the boundaries of other players. There is a possibility that some players might end up there who aren’t comfortable with that code or capable of handling that kind of role play. It opens the door for abuse and will attract creepers imo.
TLDR: fully consensual role play especially private role play that involves SA themes is fine. Coded non consensual SA role play is disgusting.
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@Wizz There was a sort of faction of MUSHers who were into this in the '90’s. They called it ‘Immersion RP’ and were snobby about it. They didn’t want to talk OOC with anybody for any reason but mechanics necessity and some would get all mad if you paged them. They’d do stuff like wait for +time to say it was 7:20 am and grid-walk from their IC home to their IC work, pausing a set amount of time at each room and arriving at their IC work at 8, and so on. Some of those early WoD MUSHes were really heavy into this sort of model-world-building.
I can kinda see the appeal, but to me the real metagame that gaming is about is the friends we make along the way, so I have no actual interest in gaming styles that distance players or encourage them to disregard non-imaginary people and their non-imaginary feelings.
“This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!”
– A. Bertram Chandler -
pausing a set amount of time at each room
I remember more than a few games basically requiring you to do this part, and if there was anyone in those rooms you had to basically stop, engage in brief “passing through” roleplay and then continue. What a quality experience that was.
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