The SA In Games Thread (Good Luck)
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The middle ground where it is technically possible but only if the victim OOCly opts into it turns it into CNC fetish play almost by definition. At that point the “evil rapist” isn’t actually imposing something horrible on another character. The two players have negotiated a rape fantasy together.
counterpoint: instead of encouraging CNC fetish play, you’re instead enabling the people who are getting off on violating the other player, rather than the character. that is: the people for whom the enjoyment is in making the other player feel upset and being able to do stuff in the game to them the other player doesn’t want.
but also you’re still gonna get plenty of folks signing up for CNC fun. seems a little silly to get precious about it. like it just feels like "okay nobody better get gross and kinky and enjoy this, we’re above all that! it’s only okay to RP this if it makes the players miserable.
And I’ve seen that dynamic poison games before. I genuinely cannot count how many times I’ve seen some supposedly awful villain doing horrific things to another character while everyone involved OOC is having a wonderful time and the “victim” is actively helping arrange it. It stops functioning as an unpleasant consequence of living in a horrible setting and starts functioning as content being provided for people who want that content.
it seems weird to frame this as “a horrible thing is no longer being imposed on another character.” cause it is? like, in this scenario the character doesn’t want it. it’s just that the players are having fun while the characters aren’t. isn’t that usually the goal? is the goal instead for players to be upset/unhappy???
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That is actually one of the reasons I don’t want a preference flag for it in Paroxysm. If I wanted to facilitate CNC RP then an opt in system would make perfect sense. I don’t.
That also doesn’t mean someone has to sit there and explicitly RP an assault they don’t want to write. Fade to black exists. You can draw boundaries around what has to be depicted without making whether the event itself can happen dependent on whether somebody finds the scenario appealing OOC.
I completely understand the argument for banning SA outright. I think that is a coherent policy. I also understand allowing it as part of a setting where players know what they are signing up for.
I just think “SA is allowed but only when everyone involved wants SA RP” produces something very different from either of those things.
Players joining your game will know what they are signing up for, then, right? No, uh, jumpscares in cgen? Like there will be a big button on the login screen that says ‘by playing here you will be exposed to SA and may not opt out’, right?
Like people know this? Yes? Along with whatever other terrible things are possible?
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And I’ve seen that dynamic poison games before. I genuinely cannot count how many times I’ve seen some supposedly awful villain doing horrific things to another character while everyone involved OOC is having a wonderful time and the “victim” is actively helping arrange it. It stops functioning as an unpleasant consequence of living in a horrible setting and starts functioning as content being provided for people who want that content.
This has to be one of the most buckwild paragraphs I’ve ever read on any RP forum. I’m actually more weirded out by this than the opinions on SA stuff which is very much not my kink.
Why do you want people’s experience of a hobby to be bad?
Seek help.
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You want it in your game but you don’t want people to enjoy it too much?
If a game allows SA at all, I don’t see anyone signing up in the first place unless they’re into that. You aren’t gonna discover a group of very serious artistic writers who are willing to do this but like, not in a sinful way. Opt-in doesn’t matter to your target audience because they opted in by playing the game.
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And I’ve seen that dynamic poison games before. I genuinely cannot count how many times I’ve seen some supposedly awful villain doing horrific things to another character while everyone involved OOC is having a wonderful time and the “victim” is actively helping arrange it. It stops functioning as an unpleasant consequence of living in a horrible setting and starts functioning as content being provided for people who want that content.
This has to be one of the most buckwild paragraphs I’ve ever read on any RP forum. I’m actually more weirded out by this than the opinions on SA stuff which is very much not my kink.
Why do you want people’s experience of a hobby to be bad?
Seek help.
A story can only really work when characters are allowed to react to things in believable ways.
I don’t want the player’s experience to be bad. I want characters to sometimes have bad experiences because conflict and adversity are what make stories interesting.
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.
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And I’ve seen that dynamic poison games before. I genuinely cannot count how many times I’ve seen some supposedly awful villain doing horrific things to another character while everyone involved OOC is having a wonderful time and the “victim” is actively helping arrange it. It stops functioning as an unpleasant consequence of living in a horrible setting and starts functioning as content being provided for people who want that content.
This has to be one of the most buckwild paragraphs I’ve ever read on any RP forum. I’m actually more weirded out by this than the opinions on SA stuff which is very much not my kink.
Why do you want people’s experience of a hobby to be bad?
Seek help.
A story can only really work when characters are allowed to react to things in believable ways.
I don’t want the player’s experience to be bad. I want characters to sometimes have bad experiences because conflict and adversity are what make stories interesting.
Can you imagine how compelling The Handmaid’s Tale would have been if all the women were actually 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.
It’s called roleplay. If you can’t convincingly portray negative emotions without feeling them in real life, you’re not roleplaying or storytelling, you’re engaging in some sort of glorified chat server where everyone just bullies each other.
Margaret Atwood didn’t need to be physically held down in order to convincingly write characters experiencing the same. Neither do her readers, in order to find the story empathic and emotionally fulfilling.
But I picked up The Handmaid’s Tale because I wanted to read it. Her books are content for people who want that content. That’s how all media/entertainment works. I watch a horror movie because I think I’ll enjoy watching a horror movie, I read a book because I think I’ll enjoy reading a book, I emote my character loitering outside a maximum security facility because the risk of being caught and interrogated sounds fun to me.
I play antagonists all the time. The scenario where everyone is having fun and enjoying the story, even as their characters are screaming, is absolutely the ideal. That’s my dopamine hit, knowing how much fun everyone is having and that I could facilitate that. What enjoyment do you derive out of knowing your fellow players aren’t having fun?
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A story can only really work when characters are allowed to react to things in believable ways.
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And I’ve seen that dynamic poison games before. I genuinely cannot count how many times I’ve seen some supposedly awful villain doing horrific things to another character while everyone involved OOC is having a wonderful time and the “victim” is actively helping arrange it. It stops functioning as an unpleasant consequence of living in a horrible setting and starts functioning as content being provided for people who want that content.
This has to be one of the most buckwild paragraphs I’ve ever read on any RP forum. I’m actually more weirded out by this than the opinions on SA stuff which is very much not my kink.
Why do you want people’s experience of a hobby to be bad?
Seek help.
A story can only really work when characters are allowed to react to things in believable ways.
I don’t want the player’s experience to be bad. I want characters to sometimes have bad experiences because conflict and adversity are what make stories interesting.
Can you imagine how compelling The Handmaid’s Tale would have been if all the women were actually 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.
I play antagonists all the time. The scenario where everyone is having fun and enjoying the story, even as their characters are screaming, is absolutely the ideal. That’s my dopamine hit, knowing how much fun everyone is having and that I could facilitate that. What enjoyment do you derive out of knowing your fellow players aren’t having fun?
I think we’re just looking for different things from RP. I don’t want wish fulfillment where everyone gets the scenes and outcomes they were hoping for. I want uncertainty, conflict and consequences. That lack of control is part of what makes the story feel real to me. This is probably not something I’m going to change anyone’s mind on. I think we’re starting from fundamentally different ideas of what RP should be.
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The middle ground where it is technically possible but only if the victim OOCly opts into it turns it into CNC fetish play almost by definition. At that point the “evil rapist” isn’t actually imposing something horrible on another character. The two players have negotiated a rape fantasy together.
Point not exactly made. It just turns it into a collaborative story effort.
I have RPed several things things that I have no fantasies for or inclination toward. OOC consent doesn’t usually mean “wants that” it just means “is willing to experience reading / writing about that”.
The obvious question is why would you WANT to RP an SA scene, or inflict an IC SA scenario, on another player who would not opt in?
You say an OOC opt-in is ‘negotiating a rape fantasy’. Ok… So what do we call deliberately imposing SA on a player who didn’t agree to it?
And I’ve seen that dynamic poison games before. I genuinely cannot count how many times I’ve seen some supposedly awful villain doing horrific things to another character while everyone involved OOC is having a wonderful time and the “victim” is actively helping arrange it. It stops functioning as an unpleasant consequence of living in a horrible setting and starts functioning as content being provided for people who want that content.
It starts functioning as a … game? Entertainment. Holy shit. How awful! Literally putting the ‘G’ in RPG.
That also doesn’t mean someone has to sit there and explicitly RP an assault they don’t want to write. Fade to black exists.
But they can’t retcon it or act like it never happened moving forward, I’m guessing? How exactly are you going to police that?
Player A decides their character SA Player B’s character. Player B doesn’t consent OOC and fades the scene. Afterward, Player B decides to simply declines to acknowledge it moving forward. Now what?
Is staff going to come in and force the SA as canonical and compel Player B to incorporate it into their RP or get a ban?
I completely understand the argument for banning SA outright. I think that is a coherent policy. I also understand allowing it as part of a setting where players know what they are signing up for.
I just think “SA is allowed but only when everyone involved wants SA RP” produces something very different from either of those things.
Yeah. It produces consensual collaborative story telling about non-consensual fictional events. Which is how we handle a large amount of RP already.
I think we’re just looking for different things from RP. I don’t want wish fulfillment where everyone gets the scenes and outcomes they were hoping for. I want uncertainty, conflict and consequences. That lack of control is part of what makes the story feel real to me. This is probably not something I’m going to change anyone’s mind on. I think we’re starting from fundamentally different ideas of what RP should be.
Consenting to RP about subjects and scenarios doesn’t mean you get the scenes and outcomes you hope for. It just means you get players who want to play that aspect of the game. The rest will either just not play the game, or will FTB and then ignore it ever happened and won’t talk about it on screen, or will subsequently quit the game and disappear randomly from the grid in a most “unreal” fashion.
“Lack of control making the story feel real” doesn’t exist in what you are arguing for. People who don’t want to RP that scenario are just going to FTB. In which case, there is no story produced for you to “feel real” at all.
Just because you didn’t acquire OOC consent, doesn’t mean you don’t need OOC consent. You can’t ever force the person on the other end of the line to type a single pose or even a “fuck you”. The more I think about it, the more it seems this conversation is pointless. You can’t get the content you want without consent whether that’s clearly stated or implied by the fact that it’s being RPed at all.
So if the fact is that it’s only the people who do consent OOC that will stick around to RP it in any form, why not just save a ton of headaches by identifying them up front?
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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.
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I want a game where the world, the mechanics and other characters can impose outcomes on you that you didn’t choose.
Okay but you are avoiding the question of how you as a game runner think you are going to actualize this ideal on your game?
Given that any RP at all can only be accomplished by the OOC consent of the players involved (the act of RPing alone indicates the fact of consent): how would you police the inevitable scenario of someone who didn’t want SA as part of their character’s history simply choosing the FTB option and thereafter just refusing to acknowledge that anything happened - effectively retconning it for themselves and others?
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the act of RPing alone indicates the fact of consent
I’d only majorly quibble on this statement. I don’t have anecdotes to share, but I can absolutely see a situation in which one feels compelled to ‘follow through’ on RP they don’t want to do in order to satisfy another person. Much the same as in any “was it really SA…?” situation.
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