100% Greek. Although after years of first studying in England and eventually living in Canada who knows what I sound like any more.
I'm Mediterranean-white, which essentially means when people around me are bursting in the sun like vampires I'm immune to its rays.
Now, will Mage 2.0 come out out before or after Avengers 3?
@7Wonders said:
Rape fetishes are sexualizing an act that's about power and control but isn't actually about sex.
You can't name acts other than rape which are about power and control taken non-consensually in a World of Darkness game?
It's when we start picking and choosing that the hypocrisy manifests. "This terrible act is worse than the other terrible act!", you know?
@Cobaltasaurus True, but most games don't also have people calling for murder to be a bannable offense or the RP nulled if murder takes place. The scale of response is just different.
@silentsophia said:
The thing is, I've objected to rape RP on non-sex games and been called a prude and/or intolerant of TS and sex before.
It's not justified to call anyone anything based on their personal response to a certain form of RP. We all have buttons and something will invariably push them in an adult game.
I think what's important here is just what 'objected' means in this case.
@tragedyjones I think you just made @EmmahSue cry bitter tears.
If Changeling 2.0 isn't careful it might induce me to play one for the first time ever.
If only 'don't be a dick' was enough. Hell, these forums would barely have a reason to exist any more. 
@7Wonders said:
The more important question is why staff permit this to happen. If TR ever did anything right it was the policy that was put into place by @EmmahSue about this.
Which policy are you referring to? Could you quote it please?
@Ganymede said:
@Arkandel said:
It's harder for me (YMMV) to maintain the premise of a conflicted, down on his lack character when the majority of the time I'm actually posing it's in a happy, committed, stable situation.
I don't understand this at all. You're suggesting that a conflicted, down-on-his-luck character cannot have a happy, committed relationship, which is false. At the same time, you're suggesting that your character must have a happy, committed relationship, which is also false.
I said no such thing. I said it is harder for me to maintain the premise of such a character when the majority of my time is spent roleplaying happy fun times but the themes I intend to explore are darker ones.
That's my preference (your-mileage-may-vary and all); I said nothing about it being impossible. If it works for other people then more power to them.
@7Wonders said:
I am considering walking away. It's always that quibble though about all that you've constructed and having to kick your sandcastle in based on external factors that are beyond your control, but for the walking away.
You don't have to get rid of your character. Just distance yourself from the person who's making you uncomfortable (maybe even explain why to them it is over a page) and the related RP.
@HelloRaptor said:
@Arkandel (for sure this time)
Playing such obsessions out appeals to me, as I've no interest at all in healthy IC relationships. Those can't go anywhere because what's left for the PCs to do after they've hooked up and everything is working out just great for them?
That doesn't really seem to follow. I mean, if an IC relationship is the primary focus of your storytelling interest, that would be true but a relationship is only one part of your life. Other shit can still go terribly wrong, even when you're in a healthy relationship, can't it?
Yes. The thing though is, MU* gameplay tends to occupy time in a biased fashion; the shit that goes wrong usually happen over PrPs or the background, so they occupy a relatively small part of your actual play time, but usually a PC dating/TSing yours is on a lot more. It's harder for me (YMMV) to maintain the premise of a conflicted, down on his lack character when the majority of the time I'm actually posing it's in a happy, committed, stable situation.
As for the rest of the "some bad things are different than others"... I don't like the idea of quantifying trauma or picking which is 'worse', since all of it is terrible past a certain point, and it all leaves scars behind. The person who was the victim of random non-sexual violence and flinches at sudden motions around them, the guy who lost a loved one to gun violence and abhors firearms, they're all traumatized people. That crap shouldn't happen to anyone, ever.
So how do we really say "okay, <X> is banned on this adult game" with a straight face? I am not a therapist and I honestly don't know how to go about this other than by trying to not be an douche when I play.
What I do know is that stories anchored in relatable pain can be made more powerful for it. For instance on SHH my entire first act of a PrP series was centered around extensive animal abuse where I was specifically pulling on players' heartstrings about it to get an emotional response. And they gave it, they were really angry at the villain - which is great if you want to create a long-term nemesis rather than just a generic enemy to throw dice against. I don't get off in any way from mistreated animals (all my dogs are rescues and my spouse works for Animal Control and tells me infuriating real stories of being being complete assholes regularly), and I would have totally understood if someone had gone 'sorry, I can't do this', but I wouldn't hesitate to use it to tell a more interesting story.
Anyway, I dunno. It just seems to me that saying "oh, no, rape is bad so we're banning it" but being okay with people getting shot in the face is a bit hypocritical.
@Coin said:
GOT MY TICKETZ.
You'll never get to see it again for the first time @COIN. Ever! Which is what I am about to do. Muah hah hah.
(Small victories - take'em where you can get'em)
If you're set on a specific time period maybe one of these?
Use a tiny corner of the world, some town in the middle of nowhere. So as long as some major facts are set in stone on the wiki (who the King/Queen is, etc) the rest is irrelevant because who cares? Before the industrial revolution most people lived and died within a few miles of where they were born.
Use a slightly alternate setting of what you intend to run. Victorian Age + some steampunk for example allows for enough differences for exact historical information to be useless, but you can still keep the broad strokes to anchor it.
Does anyone care about full historical accuracy these days though?
We're talking about slightly different things, Gany.
You are referring to a theoretical but consensual environment in which someone who tries to inflict fates on other PCs their players don't want shouldn't be allowed to. I do agree with you on this, but that's because I prefer consent-based collaborative environments. Of course players should consider the other person's feelings before irrevocably harming their PC, but not everyone does.
However I wasn't talking about that, but rather, what @Thenomain said about how some problem players get away with essentially 'forcing' fates on others by any means necessary, including outright lying about game policies or potential consequences if they didn't comply, and insisting that their preference for what should happen is carried and played out.
I suppose a roughly equivalent non-example of that would be if I wanted your PC to vote my way, and I started paging you threatening to kill that PC if they didn't, The funny thing is though players like that actually don't threaten outright but rather ... insinuate what the outcome would be in a roundabout fashion ("you know, I hate killing PCs, but my character is a homicidal maniac who doesn't like being voted down so... I don't know, it's up to you. He's very powerful you know, and has lots of friends, no one could stop him"). Just so it sort of sounds like it'd be your fault if I 'had' to kill your character.
Still douchebaggery, just different flavors of it.
@Wizz Yeah, historical accuracy is a lose/lose. Most players won't know enough, a few specialized players will know too much, and they two groups just make each other miserable.
I don't know, @Thenomain. Although I agree of course that the amount of pressure some bad players have been known to put on people is absurd and unfair I still maintain that ultimately we're responsible for our own actions. However defending this would get too close to blaming the victim and I'm uncomfortable doing that even if for a MU*.
I think it's the job of all of us as a community (and not just staff) to drill the idea into everyone's head so that it's basic, common knowledge that
You may always, always, ALWAYS fade-to-black
and that's about it. It's all we can do.
Otherwise there will always be manipulating, conniving players like Juerg (who practically wrote the book on how to be a creep in MU*) and they'll always push the envelope to get what they want. At that point it's very hard for anyone else to intervene because we won't and shouldn't know what's happening behind closed doors or over pages, so even staff are limited to acting after the fact, and often in he-said she-said situations.
@7Wonders said:
I can't speak to their offline backgrounds but as a victim of rape in real life, I have a hard time finding anything remotely sexual about it. Even typing this makes me feel queasy, though your personal constitution and outlook may vary.
I am truly sorry about what happened to you. And no one here can blame you for not finding the thought of it used in RP appealing - but that's not an argument, unless someone was trying to insinuate you should.
However, I often am struck that in certain situations, the use of rape as plot device does read as kinky sexy typesex fun with something dramatic to RP about later. When it comes to that, it feels then like a player is trying on or working through a sexual interest at the expense of other players, often not with their consent.
You lost me there. A number of players do all sorts of sex-RP things (including this) primarily because it's fun but consent is implicit since no one can force someone else to type stuff they don't want to do. Are some people creeps who'll try to guilt-trip or otherwise convince others that they should RP whatever their kink is? Yup. That's what makes them creeps. Is it wrong? Damn right it is. Are these people who end going along with it doing so without their consent? No. As long as we're all adults we're all responsible for our own choices. There's
Those people who want to typesex the fetishized concept of rape, while I can't quite get there personally, I get that its in a thing in the world and people do this. But I'd really rather they seek like minded players and explore this topic privately and just leave everyone else alone about it.
It's a fair request. I am just trying to point out that there's a fair number of valid requests based on what each player personally dislikes; for example I've spoken to people who hate IC relationships in general ('this is the World of Darkness, not Twilight!'), I've been myself an elitist who grumbled about people not having fun the right way ('it's a post-apocalyptic world and you're running an +event for a beach beer party?') and it just goes on. You can't expect things you don't like to never happen anywhere near you, because that's just not how games work; we're all sharing the setting.
If you don't like what's being played currently, walk away. Play somewhere else, and if needed with someone else. Everyone occasionally run into crap we don't find fun, we just do what it takes to fix that.
@Misadventure said:
It's not a misquote. You could argue it's changing the direction from the point of the post to something like "Can you speak for all of situation X, everywhere, ever?", but even then it moves onto reiterating a previously made point.
It is a misquote because he attributed something @Thenomain said to me.
@HelloRaptor said:
I know Mages have the kinkiest sex, but are any of them worried about the Abyss during it? No. It should at least be part of the game-play, like it is any other time.
...seriously?
I dunno who you were quoting there man, but it's not me. Ask them!