Quote from: tenbones;1123729I've had people try to play themselves in my campaigns, and very quickly found them doing such horrendous things that it weirded everyone out... really really horrendous acts by both omission and comission that made me realize for a lot of people, RPGs are not for everyone.

Stipulation: It could be just my games, as I like to get in-depth with things... but I defend my position by saying I don't condone cannibalism and human sacrifice as a normal mode of conduct, so I'm ruling this out.

Can you be more specific about this? Presumably you're talking about a player doing horrendous things in the game. i.e. Their character is an evil necromancer who engages in human sacrifice, and thus weirds out the other players.

I don't have your personal experience, but to my mind, it is a high bar to say that how someone plays their imaginary character is objectively wrong. I've seen and indeed played a lot of evil player characters in my campaigns, when the player was someone who was perfectly nice. I'm not sure of what line you're drawing that some role-playing crosses the line.

In my case, I've been concerned about how certain players engaged in the immersion. To be blunt, it gets creepy when its obvious the player is acting out something sexually fulfilling or something deeply wrong psychologically with themselves. Those aren't people anyone needs at their table...and the freaks need therapy, not dice.
 
In those VERY RARE cases, its not even about the PC actions as much as the player's performance. And when I say "very rare", I mean "less than a dozen" in 40 years of public gaming with a thousand plus strangers.

And I often play with nutballs who joke about dank shit, act out banging zombie strippers while we're eating and love to "take the piss" whenever possible, so my bar for "civilized behavior at the game table" isn't high.

Quote from: tenbones;1123729... but I defend my position by saying I don't condone cannibalism and human sacrifice as a normal mode of conduct, so I'm ruling this out.

No human sacrifice would really cut down on the fun of running a Pantangian or Melnibonean sorcerer when playing Stormbringer.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1123695I don't remember that. Was HAL's consciousness more discussed in the book?

Somewhat, though it's also seen in the movie as Bowman is systematically lobotomizing him, Hal is begging him to stop as he feels his mind shutting down. It's pretty disturbing, and more so when you realize Hal's psychosis wasn't integral, but imposed by some idiot bureaucrat sitting safely on Earth. There's a reason Dr. Chandra and Dr. Floyd are pissed off when they find out about it in the sequel (2010).

Quote from: Bren;1123789No human sacrifice would really cut down on the fun of running a Pantangian or Melnibonean sorcerer when playing Stormbringer.

Maybe you could sacrifice people from San Francisco, they don't count as human, right? Kidding, kidding...

Quote from: Omega;1123756We aren't talking about normal folk who LARP or really get into their TTRPG character and the adventure. Theres a line past which doing something you enjoy crosses into loony land.

I'll acknowledge that but I have met exactly one player who crossed that line, two if we count someone who was well over the line but only with one of her characters. She figured out after a few months that she shouldn't play that character any more.

I've seen a few too many who cross the line a little or alot in and out of gaming. And way too much in LARPing.

One example was a group pushing for enforcing staying in character even if someone was injured or required medical attention. Or the LARPers who want to use real weapons and are just short of trying to murder people. Or the simple fact that this push is making LARPing increasingly unsafe. Sooner or later theres going to be a fatality, if one hasnt happened allready. Some of the full armour battles are just insane the levels of violence they are inflicting on eachother. We are talking full force swings. Its a testament to just how well full plate armour with the propper under padding protects the wearer that anyone was still alive afterwards.

Mercifully you dont see that with TTRPGs. It tends to be more about becoming the character when things drift into wackyland.

Usually though what you see are mostly harmless excesses rather than anything detrimental. Though some might argue that cosmetic surgery to make yourself look like an elf or vampire is crossing the line. Id say it would be only if they start acting weird too. Otherwise its just body art. Though even that can get out of hand.

As noted before. Somehow, some way, someone will take something too far. Sooner or later there will be at least one in any given fandom, activity, whatever.

Quote from: jhkim;1123769Can you be more specific about this? Presumably you're talking about a player doing horrendous things in the game. i.e. Their character is an evil necromancer who engages in human sacrifice, and thus weirds out the other players.

World of Darkness. I have/had a player (he's literally stopped playing RPG's because he realized in this game that he had personal issues to address).

So basically, my WoD games do delve into personal horror in the sense that I want to challenge players assumptions about their characters based on their backgrounds. Well the player in question was developing a lot of anxiety playing in my WoD games, especially when the pressure was on... He'd shut down and do random shit in order to make it look like he was "doing something" that inevitably had disastrous consequences for himself and often for the group. So for a long time I thought it was an engagement issue. My games can get complex and I thought that the heavy politics was causing him to second-guess everything and it was paralyzing him personally, and he was not focusing on what his character would do. Essentially he was metagaming as himself and struggling against the conceits of his character vs. the "situation".

My other players noticed it too (he'd caused a LOT of problems for their characters because of his inability to commit and prosecute anything with confidence or competence). So I had the "bright" idea of suggesting - "Why don't you play yourself"? And I gave him my reasoning, and he seemed excited and agreed. (WORSE IDEA EVER)

So we started a new game - and shockingly, while we already identified this "habit" that he'd normally play in "siege mode" - like everyone is out to get him with his other characters, he'd do things in game to get "whatever" he deemed necessary to make himself feel "safe". Since he was playing himself literally in-game, it got *really* freaky. Because immediately this behavior emerged. He allowed his roomate (his former real-life roomate I made into an NPC - who was his childhood friend I wanted to use as a "stabilizer" for him in game) - to get assaulted and rather than help her after identifying her and her assailant - *walked by and ignored the attack while it was going on in the alley*. He rationalized that he could never beat up a a street-thug (despite having the element of surprise, various make-shift weaponry laying around) And his roomate saw him walk on by while it was happening. I remember the looks everyone gave each other around the room... it was a (whoa!) moment. Effectively he began systematically jettisoning *everything* about his real life I put into the game and he focused on the sole goal of "getting power".

He ran after every red-herring or inadvertant assumption he felt would get his "character" a leg up. in two sessions which took place over a time period of about two-weeks - he allowed his female real-life roomate and childhood friend get physically and sexually assaulted, got caught up in a sex-club where he was "the Donkey" in the "Donkey Show" - where he was in a gimp-suit with a saddle on his back and BDSM performers were riding him around, whipping him on stage, he ended up jacked up on mescaline and joining a cult that participated in human-sacrifice and cannibalism (these were in-game NPC adversaries that were supposed to be dealt with - not joined), because he thought they'd give him powerz. He'd become effectively homeless, lost *everything*... because he was so focused on getting supernatural power to deal with something that wasn't even really happening. I couldn't do a single scene with him without it going sideways and turning into a Tarantino-on-a-two-week-LSD-binge type scene.

And the conversations *after* these sessions freaked everyone out. Everyone else was playing regular characters doing fairly regular stuff, building intrigue, doing stuff pertinent to their own characters. Nothing crazy or whacky - no sex-clubs, cults, nothing *remotely* crazy. Meanwhile this other player was practically stroking out just playing like a maniac.

The end result is: he couldn't even play **himself**. Because his personal issues made playing RPG's nearly impossible due to the anxiety it produced in him. We talked about it at length, and after playing with me for quite a long time, he dropped from my group and got counseling. He's made a couple of attempts at joining back with us (which is councilor's tacit approval) and realized he likes the swashbuckling lighter-fare I run - and dips out when we're doing more hardcore stuff.

Quote from: jhkim;1123769I don't have your personal experience, but to my mind, it is a high bar to say that how someone plays their imaginary character is objectively wrong. I've seen and indeed played a lot of evil player characters in my campaigns, when the player was someone who was perfectly nice. I'm not sure of what line you're drawing that some role-playing crosses the line.

Mind you - this is not the *only* experience I've had in this arena. This is why I'm fully acknowledging that *I* play a part in it. I want 110% in my game. If it's a Supers game... I'm going to try to provide the 110% Super Hero Experience (which happens on many many many different levels I try to tailor to the PC(s) in question). If it's Horror... I'm going to try to scare the holy fucking shit out of you through your PC's experience. If we're doing Swashbuckling - I'm going to try to swash *all* the buckles! And that also implies the player engagement factor (in varying ways) must be high *and* pro-game as opposed to pro-personal issues.

And you're right - it's a high-bar to *say* someone is playing their character "objectively wrong" - but that calls into question the objective of playing. If we're all in agreement we're here to play a game where the emergent quality of interaction fills us all with wonder/joy/exaltation/fun etc. and the GM is having as great a time as the players - yes, we should always shoot for that. If we're having objective problems reaching that emergent state because a player(s) is incapable of getting past the most basic conceits of playing a character (much less one that is their literal fictionalized version of themselves) and those issues are causing problems for the other players, or worse: actual concerns about the individual in question. Then we have an objective problem, and I as the GM have to make the call when that happens. I can't let someone's subjective issues, no matter how much fun they convince themselves they're having ruin the game for everyone else.

I'm not disagreeing with you on this AT ALL. When I run my games, I'm shooting for maximum intensity and I want my players to have as much freedom as I can give them. Playing evil characters in my games are fairly routine. Playing good characters are as well. My sandboxes reinforce their conceits and the players are free to change those through play. But few things are ever easy - which is what, in my experience, makes my games satisfying. They are *not* for everyone.

Some player have a hard time with immersion and knowing where the line is - especially if those same players have deep rooted personal issues that they're blind to and the act of roleplaying those issues becomes heightened and they are not self-aware enough to realize it's now (or always has been) problem. These are the people that are playing RPG's for ulterior reasons in the times where I've encountered them. They have personality issues (who doesn't?) that can get in the way.

Again - it also depends greatly on the GM. This is why I say it's the GM's job to curate their group to produce the experience they want. My group ranges the spectrum in personality types, class, and education (and now age). But we all know why we're there. The game comes first, we can shoot the shit, talk politics, sports, later (and we do). Those that show up because they're dodging their issues they need to be dealing with in their life that they *can't* control - yeah I don't need those players. Call me when you get your shit together.

Quote from: Bren;1123789No human sacrifice would really cut down on the fun of running a Pantangian or Melnibonean sorcerer when playing Stormbringer.

I'm going to have to make a stipulation for this.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;1122898Splintered from here.My thoughts on the matter aren't fully baked at the moment, and probably won't be for awhile. There's definitely a middle ground here, and it may just be that it's different for everyone. So until then I'd really like to hear where everybody else thinks this line should be drawn, because this issue is at the heart of the current culture war when it comes to RPGs.

I really don't care about culture wars.

As I mostly GM, I often play bad guys, murderers, thieves, dark magicians, rapists, torturers and so on. Does that make me anything like them?No, not at all.

As a Player, I like playing kill-crazy barbarians. Does that make me a kill-crazy barbarian? Of course not.

But, I am probably completely missing the point here,

Quote from: soltakss;1124115I really don't care about culture wars.

As I mostly GM, I often play bad guys, murderers, thieves, dark magicians, rapists, torturers and so on. Does that make me anything like them?No, not at all.

As a Player, I like playing kill-crazy barbarians. Does that make me a kill-crazy barbarian? Of course not.

But, I am probably completely missing the point here,

You sound like you're in the fortunate position to not have had to deal with it at your table. I hope you continue in your good fortune, sir.

Once you get a few such encounters under your belt (god forbid) - you'll understand the rancor. I hope it never happens to you (or anyone else for that matter - so we can get on with the business of having fun.)

Quote from: soltakss;1124115I really don't care about culture wars.

This isnt, usually, about culture wars. Its about people on both sides of the fence going overboard and pretty much blurring the lines between fantasy and reality.

Exactly where the "you are what you play!" nuts get their idea from is a mystery. But its popped up for at least a hundred years. For some I think it is the inability to separate the "actor" from the "role". And has carried over into RPGs and gaming in general. Ive seen it directed at wargames too. And there was that blow-up last year with ExtraCredit on Youtube and their video about how playing a Nazi will make you one. But then ExtraCredits has been going slowly SJW nutters for a while now.

On the flip side the "immersion" fanatics are another hard one to pin down. Obviously part of it is an outgrowth of some players liking immersion. But a surprising number seem obsessed with it. And at the far end you have people either really obsessed, wanting to blur the lines between fantasy and reality. Storygamers push immersion hard quite a bit as do certain factions of LARPers. And with LARPers dangerously so.

If you never run into any of this. Great!

Right, I see. I've never encountered that, except in films.

I suppose if I played in a series of LARPs as the same nasty perverted character then it could be seen as part of me, but if I did that I'd probably play in other LARPs as other characters.

That's the beauty of RPGs, as a Player I can play very different characters across a wide spectrum.

I know someone who played a Yelmalian Sun Domer in a RQ game, he decided that they were racially pure, as they married inside their community, so he played his PC as a white supremacist bigot, which is so far away from what the Player was actually like as a person.

Some of us have no problem with playing PCs who are very different from our real selves. In fact, I thought that was what Roleplaying Games are about.

Everyone approaches it differently. Some play totally different from themselves and others play pretty much themselves and other play an ideal/idea, and others play some other permutation or just random based on the rolls.

I think some of the "you cant play villains you'll become/are one!" is probably a variation on the moral guardian problem. I've seen it a few times but oddly not recently that I can recall right off. But when 5e D&D came out there were a few sporadic declarations over on BGG for example. Some were just misinformed and changed their minds once it was explained. Others were practically obsessed that "D&D is only about violence and killing!" ad nausium.

Tenbones, how many times have you had a nutball player go batshit?

It sounds like you go "hardcore immersion" - which I dearly love, but rarely have a group who are that committed. I'm happy with 75% vs. your 110% (and we could argue that's maybe that's why I get 75%).  

For those of you who haven't had a player go batshit at your table, that's probably normal. However, when it does happen, it's rather memorable. Most of my gaming is public, aka events with strangers, and I've had my share of nutballs over the 4 decades, but even while the incidents have been memorable, the actual number has been very tiny overall.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1124177Tenbones, how many times have you had a nutball player go batshit? [...]

When players go batshit, you have more spell components to cast fireballs. Win, win.