Quote from: Fritzs;256364StormBringer: Something's telling me, that being "eternaly underage" doesn't mean being child... think about it, you could be hundrets years old and you would still be "underage"... poor Rook, that must suck!

So, does the example from Maid sexualize a 300yr old being that only looks eleven?

Quote from: droog;256348

And what, exactly, is your point?

RPGPundit

Quote from: walkerp;256350Like Mexicans and look what happened to America!

Are you seriously claiming mexicans are all socially retarded sexual deviants??

You are one fucked up individual.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Engine;256353Excellent!


Yeah, I don't think you understand what I was trying to get at. I'm not saying that if you find this game creepy, you must work against child molestation or else be barred from vocal objection; what I'm saying is that if you find this game creepy, you should work against child molestation.

If Maid bothers you - given that it's a fantasy game which allows for the possibility of objectionable behavior - then the real world should blow you into a fury of charity. It's easy to spend a few hours on a message forum, running your mouth, but if you really and truly object to the game on this basis, you should do more than speak out against it, you should work against the problem itself in real life. You, Good Assyrian, do so, and that is laudable. Many people do not, and I believe they should.

So, basically, you're just conceding the point that the maid game itself is promoting sexually degenerate behaviour, and are now just getting into a totally different point about how people who are bothered by this should also be bothered by real-life sexual abuse?

But you are then basically admitting that Maid is fucked up, right? I mean, you didn't deny that to Assyrian, so you must be, right?

RPGPundit

Quote from: Fritzs;256355That character generation in GURPS is interesting. You can, if you want generate -4+3i years old sexy cthulhu/human hybrid space maid, who is space nazi-commie, is marryed to her father (cthulhu), is into BDSM, drugs and likes them young.

Yes, this sounds like a perfectly wholesome game.

The difference being that in Maid, the character I generated directly fits the theme of the game. In GURPS, you'd have to be choosing one out of an infinite number of possible settings, designing it yourself, and intending to create such a perverse setting.

So if your point is "a lawncrapper could use the GURPS system to create his own sexual fantasy world", then I'd say sure, sure he could.
That doesn't negate that its quite a different thing from publishing a game that ENCOURAGES that same lawncrappery and makes it pretty fucking central to the theme of the game.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Fritzs;256360How many Forge games have you read? Don't bother with answering, you allready did it in the line I quoted above... zero.

Wrong, fucktard. I've unfortunately been forced to read a few forge games for review purposes, and others I have read to know my enemy.

Now, your fucking point is? Oh wait, it was just mindless slander, you have no point. You almost never do.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Engine;256343It's not an either/or issue, though. We all believe there's some amount of time people "deserve" or "are allowed" to spend being entertained, and roleplaying is one of the ways we entertain ourselves. That said, given the strenuous level of objection to this game, it does seem as if those people objecting most strongly should be spending some amount of time protecting actual children, rather than objecting to people pretending to be children.

In short, if you don't like child molestation, you're certainly within your rights to object to a game in which such molestation is possible or encouraged, but you also ought to be spending vastly more time protecting real children. You can do both, absolutely! But I don't think many of the objectors are doing both, and that is most illogical.

I'm not sure that the 'tone' of the objections is any different to the tone of the defence.

You could equally argue that the people defending the game should be out in the real world fighting real censorship/prudery, rather than arguing against people who have no power to ban this game and in most cases probably don't want to (OK, there might be some situation where someone's organising a con and wants to stop people running 'Maid'. But really, if you believe that the arguments against 'Maid' are bad you'd probably have to accept that there are lots of things that are worse in the same way).

So yes, the whole argument is NIMBY City.

It's comparable to the people in the Vietnam War who decided they really hated conscription at the exact same moment that they became liable for it. It didn't follow that their arguments were invalid, or even that they weren't doing good by being hypocritically active.

Quote from: RPGPunditI've unfortunately been forced to read a few forge games for review purposes, and others I have read to know my enemy.

So, where does for example Shab-al-hiri roach ecourage degenerate sexual fantasies or anything, that is unacceptable to what you think general public is...?

Quote from: RPGPunditOh wait, it was just mindless slander, you have no point. You almost never do.

Having a point=/=agree with RPGPundit.

Quote from: RPGPundit;256368So, basically, you're just conceding the point that the maid game itself is promoting sexually degenerate behaviour, and are now just getting into a totally different point about how people who are bothered by this should also be bothered by real-life sexual abuse?

But you are then basically admitting that Maid is fucked up, right? I mean, you didn't deny that to Assyrian, so you must be, right?

This is high school debate team tactics stuff, RPGPundit.  Come on.

Quote from: StormBringer;256361Wait, are you saying the older person has an entirely appropriate reaction to the affections of an underage person?  In other words, they aren't having this underage girl perform humiliating, sexual acts?

How are those correlated again?  In one, the behaviour towards an underage girl is entirely appropriate, and in the other it isn't.  Who here said that teenaged crushes are disgusting or inappropriate for RPGs?  Are you saying that a teenage crush is the same thing as sexualizing an eleven year old?

Well, those aren't inherently different.  A fictional portrayal of appropriate behavior can be sexualizing.  

It isn't inherently wrong for a fiction writer, GM, or player to make a fictional crime happen.  This is true regardless of whether the crime is murder, torture, enslavement, or child abuse.  If the fiction portrays the crime as a crime and doesn't glorify it, then it isn't inappropriate for it to be portrayed.  As a GM or a player, I can portray an character doing bad things without myself being bad.  

Conversely, I think that one can have a completely crime-free fiction that inappropriately sexualizes.  The issue isn't whether a fictional crime is committed -- the issue is what message the fiction sends.

Quote from: RPGPundit;256368So, basically, you're just conceding the point that the maid game itself is promoting sexually degenerate behaviour, and are now just getting into a totally different point about how people who are bothered by this should also be bothered by real-life sexual abuse?

I concede that many people here find the possibilities of Maid to be objectionable, certainly. [Well, okay, that's not really a concession. Still.] As I've said before, I'm not particularly worked-up about it, because I don't generally get worked-up about others' fantasies until they affect my life, which I don't really believe Maid is going to do.

Quote from: RPGPundit;256368But you are then basically admitting that Maid is fucked up, right? I mean, you didn't deny that to Assyrian, so you must be, right?

I think I probably have a very different idea of what "fucked up" means than many of the people here, just as their ideas of what's "fucked up" would be different from each others', and from mine, and from yours.

Do I think Maid promotes sexually deviant play? I don't know; I haven't read it. Certainly, some people seem to have played it in a sexually deviant way, but it's difficult to judge whether that's a property of the game or the players. Do I think Maid is as sexually deviant as the average hentai? Uh, no. Do I find sexual deviancy - particularly in fantasy - objectionable? No.

But to answer your question, do I think Maid is "promoting sexually degenerate behaviour?" Boy, I just don't know. Grand Theft Auto lets you fuck whores; do I think it promotes fucking whores? I'd need a lot more data about GTA players and whore-fucking. I certainly wouldn't want to make any sort of judgment without that information.

To answer your mostly-unspoken question, no, my pursuit of an ancillary issue does not mean I concede the previous arguments. All I'm saying is, if you think child molestation is a real problem, go out and get involved in organizations which aid abused children, don't sit here and complain about a game in which real children aren't abused. Get involved! There really are real children being seriously abused every day, and if you find it objectionable, do something! I mean, you don't have to, but doesn't it seem like a good idea?

Now, you've said, Pundit, that you're not troubled by the perversion, per se, but the effect on the hobby: in your case, working child abuse centers might be nice, but it's not really logically required by your views. All you could do is stand around in forums and at gaming shops and say, "Don't buy Maid. It will ruin roleplaying." Which is, more or less, what you're doing, so good on you, mate.

Quote from: Age of Fable;256375You could equally argue that the people defending the game should be out in the real world fighting real censorship/prudery, rather than arguing against people who have no power to ban this game and in most cases probably don't want to.

Quoted for truth. I think in this case, what's good for the goose is good for the entire species.

Quote from: droog;256158Also let me point out that Quentin Tarantino made overdosing and shooting people in the toilet cool...if you look at it like that.

Or Borat. I have a friend who foams at the mouth when Borat is mentioned because "he's making fun of good, hard-working Christians."

Seanchai

Quote from: Engine;256357I mean, this is the "Playboy causes rape," argument, and while there's data to suggest that media can influence people toward action, there's also data to suggest that it can prevent action by giving the actor an outlet which is not harmful to actual children. I don't think there's positive data from either side of the argument; too many people with too many preconceptions on both sides.

I think it's probably more analagous to the 'pornography that depicts rape causes rape argument' (not that I'm 100% convinced of that either).

But I think if it is 'giving the actor an outlet', surely it's fair enough to say they should take their outlet somewhere else?

Like if you had a paedophile-outlet MMORPG, people who played World of Warcraft probably wouldn't want joint cons, they wouldn't want it to use the name 'World of Warcraft' because then they'd be associated with it in the public mind, and so on?

Quote from: Age of Fable;256384I think it's probably more analagous to the 'pornography that depicts rape causes rape argument' (not that I'm 100% convinced of that either).

A much more appropriate example. Another argument, coming up much more often now, is animated renderings - by hand or machine - of underage persons in sexual situations. No actual child is harmed, but it still stimulates those who are stimulated by children in sexual situations; does this result in real-world harm? I don't think anyone knows; I'm certainly uncertain.

Quote from: Age of Fable;256384Like if you had a paedophile-outlet MMORPG, people who played World of Warcraft probably wouldn't want joint cons, they wouldn't want it to use the name 'World of Warcraft' because then they'd be associated with it in the public mind, and so on?

They probably would not, just as roleplayers wouldn't want - don't want - a paedophile-outlet RPG; the questions I see are:

1. Does Maid truly qualify as a paedophile-outlet RPG? We've seen it's possible to make it one, but we've seen that's possible with a large number of other games. Maid's mechanics make it more accessible - Shadowrun doesn't have a Sexy attribute - but how much more? How much is it encouraged, and how much is it simply "made possible?" I will need to read the RPG to judge.

2. RPG players not wanting the association doesn't mean the association is harmful; they could be over-reacting. What is the amount of actual harm to the hobby/industry caused by Maid and other, similar, games? We've heard a lot of hypotheticals, but little in the way of actual evidence.

I don't think most people care about the answers to these questions. I think they hear "you can play a little girl who has sex," and immediately react strongly against it, without asking deeper questions, because child sexuality produces a powerful emotional response. Even a lot of people who believe they're asking the deeper questions are subconsciously being strongly effected by their preconceptions, so powerful is the emotional effect of child sexuality. What I want to know is if this specific case is logically justified in producing such responses; at this point, I do not possess enough information to make an accurate assessment.