Quote from: Ratman_tf;1055271Are sex, violence and bad language adult topics though? There's a bunch of kids in my apartment complex, and goddamn do they talk like sailors. My 6 year old nephew talks about hacking limbs off with his pretend sword. Death can be a very childish topic, as most comic books choose to treat it.

Adult, to me, as techrion joked, is about paying bills and showing up to work on time. As a classification for the content of entertainment, I find it about as useful as the vanilla versus chocolate debate.

When you see an Adult Content warning on a TV show, or whatever, you'd assume it was about the grind of the office cubical life?

Quote from: Ras Algethi;1055273When you see an Adult Content warning on a TV show, or whatever, you'd assume it was about the grind of the office cubical life?

No, but I don't consider it a good guide as to any of it's content.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1055080Just caught a part from Chuck Palahniuk (the guy who wrote Fight Club) on JRE while coding and they're talking about adult content and what's ok to explore and what causes people to get upset. In particular, publishers refusing to put material which is pretty "there" because corporate chains won't put it on premium shelving because adult content. Also, writers workshops kicking the guy out (and his peers) when he presents debauched and/or dark material.

Palahnuik did a book reading at my local Chapters a few years ago. Big crowd. He was miked up, reading from his latest collection of stories. But there were still regular customers going about their business. So he gets to the part in a story where a guy is jacking off at the bottom of a swimming pool while the water intake is sucking his asshole. The intake starts to suck his intestines out, and the guy has to struggle with whether to finish himself off or pull his ass away from the intake, etc. etc. My wife and I, like everyone else, are laughing incredulously, when an old lady browsing the shelf beside us cocks her head, discerns what exactly she's listening to, and gets a baffled, horrified look on her face. Maybe there should have been some kind of public warning about the content of the reading...

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1055271Are sex, violence and bad language adult topics though? There's a bunch of kids in my apartment complex, and goddamn do they talk like sailors. My 6 year old nephew talks about hacking limbs off with his pretend sword. Death can be a very childish topic, as most comic books choose to treat it.

Only neglectful fuck-ups let their 6 year olds watch graphically violent movies or porn. Most responsible adults restrict content to kids and expose them to more mature content gradually as they become less impressionable and better able to understand context. To bring it back to RPGs, I'll play Beyond the Wall with my elementary-aged kids, but not Shadow of the Demon Lord. And if I was GMing a game for my kids and their friends, I'd run anything beyond the most family-friendly PG content (like Beyond the Wall) past the parents first out of respect.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1055080Just caught a part from Chuck Palahniuk (the guy who wrote Fight Club) on JRE while coding and they're talking about adult content and what's ok to explore and what causes people to get upset. In particular, publishers refusing to put material which is pretty "there" because corporate chains won't put it on premium shelving because adult content. Also, writers workshops kicking the guy out (and his peers) when he presents debauched and/or dark material.

Palahnuik did a book reading at my local Chapters a few years ago. Big crowd. He was miked up, reading from his latest collection of stories. But there were still regular customers going about their business. So he gets to the part in a story where a guy is jacking off at the bottom of a swimming pool while the water intake is sucking his asshole. The intake starts to suck his intestines out, and the guy has to struggle with whether to finish himself off or pull his ass away from the intake, etc. etc. My wife and I, like everyone else, are laughing incredulously, when an old lady browsing the shelf beside us cocks her head, discerns what exactly she's listening to, and gets a baffled, horrified look on her face. Maybe there should have been some kind of public warning about the content of the reading...

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1055271Are sex, violence and bad language adult topics though? There's a bunch of kids in my apartment complex, and goddamn do they talk like sailors. My 6 year old nephew talks about hacking limbs off with his pretend sword. Death can be a very childish topic, as most comic books choose to treat it.

Only neglectful fuck-ups let their 6 year olds watch graphically violent movies or porn. Most responsible adults restrict content to kids and expose them to more mature content gradually as they become less impressionable and better able to understand context. To bring it back to RPGs, I'll play Beyond the Wall with my elementary-aged kids, but not Shadow of the Demon Lord. And if I was GMing a game for my kids and their friends, I'd run anything beyond the most family-friendly PG content (like Beyond the Wall) past the parents first out of consideration.

Quote from: Haffrung;1055277Only neglectful fuck-ups let their 6 year olds watch graphically violent movies or porn.

My nephew doesn't watch graphically violent movies or porn. He came to his violent talk while swinging a plastic sword pretty much on his own, AFAICT.

Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1055080So I don't understand why people get upset over this stuff because, more often than not, this kind of material sells and sells well. And it does well too. People obviously crave it: otherwise (RPG-wise) WOD, WFRP, COC et al. wouldn't have become a thing.

People like different things. Even people who like said different things may only like them under specific circumstances or in certain media.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1055283My nephew doesn't watch graphically violent movies or porn. He came to his violent talk while swinging a plastic sword pretty much on his own, AFAICT.

I know my son always disliked any hint of sex in TV/films/games, but loved as much graphic violence as possible, as long as it was against bad guys - he hated seeing innocents get hurt. At 11 now he's still pretty much that way - loves Fallout 4. I think that's pretty typical.

Maybe Americans are just overgrown young boys.

All depends on the kids as well...

My Mum brought me up on horror films as we were totally obsessed with scary stories. It was great as it fueled my imagination for the rest of my life.

Pornography is a different matter... Kids will see it at some point. Best thing is to explain it for what it is.

Anthropologically, all healthy cultures have had the following two basic principles: violence in public, sex in private. Both of these are control mechanisms to keep the harm limited and the benefits maximized. When violence goes private, no one is safe, and "security mechanisms" quickly intrude on daily life. When sex goes public, it quickly loses its reproductive and relationship-bonding benefits and becomes sterile recreation and/or simple dominance.

Quote from: RandyB;1055339Anthropologically, all healthy cultures have had the following two basic principles: violence in public, sex in private. Both of these are control mechanisms to keep the harm limited and the benefits maximized. When violence goes private, no one is safe, and "security mechanisms" quickly intrude on daily life. When sex goes public, it quickly loses its reproductive and relationship-bonding benefits and becomes sterile recreation and/or simple dominance.

Bonobos. They Sex-it-Out before they go private or public with violence.

We need to make an RPG society like this in our games...

Quote from: trechriron;1055097yeah yeah, but it makes it more fun, right?

Not usually. I think it often makes it infantile.

Quote from: trechriron;1055261Oh Shawn, don't be pedantic, you know damn well that's what people mean when they say Adult. For fucks sake, it's not like we're talking about "paying bills and showing up to work on time".

To help with your obvious social intelligence impairment, I imagine we could create some more pedantic categories?

1) Mildly perverse (suggestions of impropriety, power differential non-consensual sex acts, exposed knees, Chipotle)
2) Perverse (sex, nudity, overt non-consensual sex acts, circus clowns, carnies, Taco Bell)
3) Extremely perverse (Venger + Pundit + Grim XXX porn, full penetration, body fluids, tentacles, monsters, Sizzler "steak" House)

So now, we can debate WHAT goes into each perversity level and completely lose sight of the original conversation!

Your compass is off. Anyway, some people lump child sex/rape into the adult category. I don't. So when a GM says his game will have adult content in it, it's best to ask what kind.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1055743So when a GM says his game will have adult content in it, it's best to ask what kind.

I definitely agree with that.

Personally I tend to avoid the phrase. I may put a more specific warning, eg for my sword & sorcery game blogs, my main Wilderlands blog header says "Just for my Wilderlands & City State of the Invincible Overlord RPG stuff. And Page 3 (NSFW!)" - which is great if readers know 'Page 3' means 'Boobies' - of course traditionally Page 3 was indeed considered "Safe for Work" in working class British culture, so the warning is more for more prurient trans-oceanic cultures who may well have no idea what the Page 3 phrase means.... which may be why the blog apparently got reported to Google for objectionable content *sigh* :confused:

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1055743Your compass is off. Anyway, some people lump child sex/rape into the adult category. I don't. So when a GM says his game will have adult content in it, it's best to ask what kind.

I always ask what the MPAA rating desired and then what is off-limits for anyone. I also offer players to just hit me up privately online with any concerns.

Quote from: trechriron;1055754I always ask what the MPAA rating desired and then what is off-limits for anyone. I also offer players to just hit me up privately online with any concerns.

Democrats kill the own babies, and teach Sex Ed to 7 and 8-year-olds in schools. And a lot of them are on Prozac. And since most GMs running games are Democrats, it's kind of important to ask first what type of game the GM has planned before signing up.