Quote from: JimLotFPSo? It's still dismemberment and cannibalism that was created by PEOPLE and has been seen by MILLIONS and is a cultural staple. Normal, everyday people know TCM. It's not some dirty in-the-closet video nasty.

Cultrual Staple?  You're kidding, right? Do you remember when it came out, how disturbing it was?  The fact that culture has become desensitized to it does not make it a staple and is certainly not something to be happy about.

Quote from: JimLotFPThey did show it. Not nudity and penetration of course, but they had a shot of the the girl's face and upper body as she's being held down as the act occurs. One of the more brutal episodes of the show.

This is the episode: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0534702/

Was this a flashback?  Because in the description they talk about the bne already happening.  Also, I'm wondering if this was edited in some way as I remember the other two things, the old lady in the closet and the weird gun/bounty hunter story, but not the one you mention.

Either way, I've calling bullshit on the use of the word "featured." I'll confirm one day when it comes around in reruns as we Tivo all of them.

Quote from: JimLotFPI think it's a Showtime program in the States. They didn't show any killing in the first episode, but they showed him tying up and jabbing his victim with sharp objects before they skipped to the next day. (and they showed plenty of dismembered bodies at crime scenes and the main character's admiration and love for blood spatter is but one of the "I AM A SOCIOPATH SEE HOW QUIRKY AND WEIRD I AM" things they show to establish the title character) I am under the impression it gets more graphic as time goes on because the hanging plot thread was him being fascinated by the work of another at-large serial killer.
Ahhh...showtime...a simply huge audience, I'm sure.

Quote from: JimLotFP10% of the population of the US would mean 30 million people. Even if it's just 1%, it's still a larger group of people than role-players.

Yeah...even if.  I'm guessing you're off by at least an order of magnitude.

Quote from: JimLotFPBut I'll say it's in the many tens of millions. TCM has been seen by many millions. That episode of CSI has been seen by god knows how many millions of people. All sorts of music, movies, and books dealing with the subject are available at real mainstream stores, many of them best-sellers or chart toppers or Oscar winners. Some have "artistic merit," some are just there to shock, and some are the result of people goofing around.

And it dawns on me that you are conflating a bunch of things here.  Can you tell me the Oscar winner that showed a boy getting beheaded and then his throat fucked? I missed that one...

See, we're not even talking about whether some people will look at a car wreck, we're talking about people reveling in the experience of playing someone who ran a young boy over with a car, got out, and sodomized him - for Story sake.

Quote from: StuartAlright, then another "little detail" that should be considered then is that in game terms by enduring rape, a character gains brutality and becomes less effective at doing non-brutal things.

Real classy.

I'm helping with a sexual assault awareness campaign next month -- I wonder what the other committee member's comments on that point of view would be?

That's an understandable assumption to make, given the name of the stat, but isn't actually true.

You roll Brutality vs. Soul if you want your pirate to be ruthless, conscienceless, or violent.  You roll Ambition vs. Brutality if you want your pirate to be cunning, stealthy, or deceitful.  So enduring rape (or any of the other listed hardships) might make your character better at being violent, and worse at being cunning - again, it depends a lot more on the comparison of the two scores involved than on any single value.  Also, there's nothing about being better at commiting violence or being ruthless that necessitates that you actually do so.

Does it realistically model the changes that victims of sexual or other types of assault go through?  Probably not.  It's not really supposed to.  It's supposed to push the game forward in interesting directions, catalyzing events towards conflict.  Whether you think that's a good thing or not seems to me to be a matter of opinion.  Certainly, in a roleplaying game, I think the latter is probably more important than the former.

Quote from: James J SkachWalker, my friend, you stumbled upon the truth of the matter, but not in the way you think.

See, if you go back to Mr. Gleichman's OP, you'll see that he was looking at this almost exclusively from the angle that this game is an example of The Forge design philosophy having it both ways.

I understood the point of the OP, which was well made, though painted with a very wide brush, especially considering that the author came out and said that the system did encourage the kind of play reported.

Quote from: James J SkachLook, System Does Matter means one of a few things things:
(snip cogent summary of interpretations of System Matters theory)

So in this case, System doesn't matter as much, because that would mean the system was fucked up - can't have that for a Forgery like Mr. Baker.

Again, Mr. Baker himself said that the system encouraged the violent play that happened.  I don't know about other subscribers to the theory who were defending it, but his position seems pretty strong and clear to me.  

Quote from: James J SkachThe most disturbing part to me is this - they don't see anything wrong with it.  They sat around in their circle of vicarious abusers and talked about how meaningful it all was. This was a good Story in their eyes. Which is why, I think, they don't have any qualms about claiming the system contributed to this play - they don't have a problem with the play itself.

Yes, I think that is about correct.

What is the anti-Swine position on System Matters?  I ask because I was under the impression that it was considered heresy around here, yet several of the most virulent (or sycophantic) of the anti-Swine have been supporting the System Matters thesis to support their argument that the author of the game and the players in that particular session were inferior to them morally.

Quote from: walkerpIsn't that a definition of roleplaying right there?

Well, I think the definition and more importantly the goals of RP are different for Forge folks.

QuoteYou're willing to explore the life of a pirate, but from the comfort of a semi-detached psychodrama.

This is a legit definition IMO, but the traditional goal of this psychodrama is a Good Time. The Forge goal is a Good Story*, and I gotta say that for a number of these games, a Good Story implies a lot of odious things being done by or to the players in game.

*I think the goal of Good Story exists because those shaping the ideas at the time couldn't decide on a definition for a Good Time and thought they had to be super-specific. It still boggles me how a few years ago I would see the occasional argument about what "fun" meant.

An interesting thing to think about is the prevalence of rape-inspired media in Japan (anime, comics, movies), a country which has one of the lowest sexual assualt rates in the first world.

I do believe that media can influence people to some degree, though the hows and whys of it are very complex and inconsistent.  I also believe that in North America we tend to be extremely scared by representations of taboo subjects in ways that other cultures often find puzzling.  While I myself have little interest in playing a game where my character gets rammed with a big dildo, I have trouble seeing how the existence of such a session could cause any malfeance in the society in general at all.

I have a harder time understand how all of you who jump up on your high horse when someone tells you that your system sucks, feel quite at ease telling others that the content of their gameplay sucks.

Quote from: walkerpWhat is the anti-Swine position on System Matters?  I ask because I was under the impression that it was considered heresy around here, yet several of the most virulent (or sycophantic) of the anti-Swine have been supporting the System Matters thesis to support their argument that the author of the game and the players in that particular session were inferior to them morally.

You're asking me?  I can't tell you "the position" as I think it's liking Libertarians to agree on something.

For me? I'm partial to Kyle's Cheetoism, but I think it simplifies matters as badly as those who take "System Does Matter" to mean system is so important that it will override the players, or direct them.

I thought about creating a mathmatical formula, something like P*S=R where P=players, S=System, and R=Result.  So it shows that when you fuck with any of the variables you will get a change in the result, but they are roughly equal in standing.  I dont' know if that equation show it, but that's my position.

So I end with the fact that Mr. Baker wrote and ran a game in which R not only stood for Result, but for Rape; brutal, tortuous rape (and that's not even getting into the necrophilia, pedophilia, etc.). And then had a bunch of players, whom I think he knew or were proponents of GNS/TBM as a Theory (though I admit to having no specific knowledge other than seeing the one player respond to the AP on the Forge), took part in the game that wallowed in the same result.  Then they all sat around in a circle of abuse and convinced themselves that there was something deeper going on while remembering laughing at the rapes/torture/brutality.

So, like I said, this was fucked up whether it was system or players.

Good luck with the game - hope you attain your goal of making money by marketing this brutality emotourism to the fawning pulbic.  Brilliant marketing, Mr. Baker, brilliant.

Quote from: James J SkachCultrual Staple?  You're kidding, right? Do you remember when it came out, how disturbing it was?  The fact that culture has become desensitized to it does not make it a staple and is certainly not something to be happy about.

That everyone knows what TCM is after 30+ years makes it a cultural staple.

Quote from: James J SkachWas this a flashback?  Because in the description they talk about the bne already happening.  Also, I'm wondering if this was edited in some way as I remember the other two things, the old lady in the closet and the weird gun/bounty hunter story, but not the one you mention.

It was shown in flashback (as the story was being recounted in "real time") but it was still shown as I described.

Quote from: James J SkachEither way, I've calling bullshit on the use of the word "featured." I'll confirm one day when it comes around in reruns as we Tivo all of them.

Call bullshit all you want. It was the major issue of the episode. The "lady in the closet" was a lead-in to the home invasion/rape (same perpetrator), the lion's share of the time of the episode was dealing with Sara trying to communicate with the girl or Grissom trying to get the father to talk, and then the long lineup sequence. the final moments of the episode show the girl dead in her driveway as her parents look on.

It was "featured."

Quote from: JimLotFPAnd it dawns on me that you are conflating a bunch of things here.  Can you tell me the Oscar winner that showed a boy getting beheaded and then his throat fucked? I missed that one...

Well, an Oscar-winning movie featured (yes, "featured") rape. Probably not any throatfucked dead boys on the Oscar list. We need some movie makers with the balls to not back down from the censors when they declare something to be "NC 17".

Quote from: JimLotFPSee, we're not even talking about whether some people will look at a car wreck, we're talking about people reveling in the experience of playing someone who ran a young boy over with a car, got out, and sodomized him - for Story sake.

I really see no real moral difference between that and invading some underground complex to kill members of an "evil race" or practitioners of a "forbidden religion" for profit.

Quote from: walkerp......

I have a harder time understand how all of you who jump up on your high horse when someone tells you that your system sucks, feel quite at ease telling others that the content of their gameplay sucks.

Walkerp,

 To borrow your phrase :  "Good God, Man! the content of their gameplay DOES suck!!" Not only that but the majority of those AP reports about Poisaon'd ?  "..and their gameplay is some seriously fucked up shit."

At the root of the whole argument on two or three forums is a game and game designer that appears to encourage sick scenes and then act all proud about it.


- Ed C.

Quote from: JamesVWell, I think the definition and more importantly the goals of RP are different for Forge folks.

This is a legit definition IMO, but the traditional goal of this psychodrama is a Good Time. The Forge goal is a Good Story*, and I gotta say that for a number of these games, a Good Story implies a lot of odious things being done by or to the players in game.

That's an interesting way to think about it.  I would suggest that it is a generalization and that there is probably a spectrum of goals in mind among the indy set (and everywhere else).  However, it is a categorization that helps me understand much better what makes someone a more traditional player and what makes someone a story gamer.  Thanks for that!

Quote from: JimLotFPIt was shown in flashback (as the story was being recounted in "real time") but it was still shown as I described.

Call bullshit all you want. It was the major issue of the episode. The "lady in the closet" was a lead-in to the home invasion/rape (same perpetrator), the lion's share of the time of the episode was dealing with Sara trying to communicate with the girl or Grissom trying to get the father to talk, and then the long lineup sequence. the final moments of the episode show the girl dead in her driveway as her parents look on.

It was "featured."

The rape wasn't featured, dimwit.  The story of the rape and its effects were featured, but not the rape.

Quote from: JimLotFPWell, an Oscar-winning movie featured (yes, "featured") rape. Probably not any throatfucked dead boys on the Oscar list. We need some movie makers with the balls to not back down from the censors when they declare something to be "NC 17".

Oh yes, we need that.

Quote from: JimLotFPI really see no real moral difference between that and invading some underground complex to kill members of an "evil race" or practitioners of a "forbidden religion" for profit.

I feel sorry for you - for a number of reasons.

Quote from: James J SkachSo I end with the fact that fifth_child wrote and ran a game in which R not only stood for Result, but for Rape; brutal, tortuous rape (and that's not even getting into the necrophilia, pedophilia, etc.). And then had a bunch of players, whom I think he knew or were proponents of GNS/TBM as a Theory (though I admit to having no specific knowledge other than seeing the one player respond to the AP on the Forge), took part in the game that wallowed in the same result.  Then they all sat around in a circle of abuse and convinced themselves that there was something deeper going on while remembering laughing at the rapes/torture/brutality.

So, like I said, this was fucked up whether it was system or players.

Good luck with the game - hope you attain your goal of making money by marketing this brutality emotourism to the fawning pulbic.  Brilliant marketing, Mr. Baker, brilliant.

You seem to be confused: I am not Vincent Baker.  My name is Dan, and I have no published games to my credit.  Vincent goes by the name of "lumpley" on every forum I've ever seen him at - I've no idea whether he's a registered user here or not.

I'm also confused about the R standing for Result and Rape thing.  Maybe it's an in-joke I'm not getting?  There's nothing it seems to reference in the text.

Fifth-child,

 Simple, blunt question:

 Were you part of the group that was in the Actual Play example that everyone is talking about ?  (or one of the other 3 AP group scenes referred to ?)

In that context, if you were, then the questions and comments you are reading from James and others up above make perfect sense.


- Ed C.

Quote from: walkerpI would suggest that it is a generalization and that there is probably a spectrum of goals in mind among the indy set (and everywhere else).

I'm willing to concede that point, and in a way, that is what the OP was about. Some tend to think of Forge folk as a monolithic group bound by The Big Model and its accessories, but some just happen to make similar games, and have developed their own motivations outside the philosophy.

Quote from: fifth_childSo enduring rape (or any of the other listed hardships) might make your character better at being violent, and worse at being cunning - again, it depends a lot more on the comparison of the two scores involved than on any single value.

Hmm. Let's see how much of this I got right... The hardships that your character has suffered in the past determine his initial Brutality, and during play you roll Soul vs Devil to endure further hardships? Does Brutality later increase only with failed rolls, or is it the inevitable consequence of suffering the abuse in the first place?

Quote from: KoltarFifth-child,

 Simple, blunt question:

 Were you part of the group that was in the Actual Play example that everyone is talking about ?  (or one of the other 3 AP group scenes referred to ?)

In that context, if you were, then the questions and comments you are reading from James and others up above make perfect sense.


- Ed C.

Nope, I wasn't at GenCon and haven't played Poison'd yet, although I may be playing it over the internet with some good friends that I haven't seen in a long time this weekend.  Depends on whether the third player prefers Poison'd or Spirit of the Century.  I was a participant in the Story-Games thread that sparked the idea in Vincent (basically, someone challenged him to make a game about cooking), though.  I bought the pdf the day before yesterday.