A few points:

While some people have drawn a parallel to furries, I think that rather misses the point.  Nearly all fields have explicit sexual material.  Movies aren't invalidated by the existence of pornographic movies.  Similarly, there is explicit material available in comics, animation, SF novels, video games, and lots of other fields without those becoming associated with it.  I don't see major outcry in those fandoms about eliminating the sexually explicit material.  

I think there can and should be a push to eliminate material that condones or glorifies unacceptable behavior.  Just having sex appear in the fiction isn't a problem -- even if the work is focused on that.  It probably won't be my thing, but I don't have issues with it.  However, I do have problems with aspects of games that promote sexism, racism, real-world violence (including sexual violence), etc.

That has been addressed in this thead, multiple times.

I read a really nasty book once. It was appalling, and I gave up reading straight away.

"And then I walked into a sci-fi bookstore, and most of the books were about alien tentacle porn. So I walked away/bought the whole set."

Thank you for completely misunderstanding the point of the objections.

Direction, content, outside impressions.

It's your problem for thinking in terms of inside and outside.

Please explain your statement. I am unable to parse the content of it.

I have to explain myself so much these days. Come back, Pierce Inverarity! Come back, Settembrini! All is forgiven!

If you weren't bent on identifying yourself as the inside, huddling together against outside impressions, you wouldn't be so worried about how people see 'the hobby'.

You see roleplaying games in general as a sci-fi bookstore, while I see no reason why they can't cover every topic covered by the novel and then some. And authors like Stephen King and Bret Easton Ellis seem to be moderately successful in their respective niches. The mainstream is already there.

It's not about huddling. It's about emerging impressions and not wishing those impressions to consist of creepy wierdos. We already had that.

Also, you seem to have missed the other objections.

My post about the sci-fi bookstore, aside from sarcasm, was also a metaphor. In no way do I limit RPGs to sci-fi and it should not be construed as such.

You have to explain yourself because, as far as I can tell, your posts are semi-incoherent by way of being too short to clearly express your ideas.

For example, your third paragraph. RPGs cover every topic covered by the novel already. There are RPGs made in the style of Stephan King and most likely the other guy I don't recognize.

You seem to be saying that the mainstream is already fully immersed in creepyness?

All of this is far too low on explanations for me to really know what you are talking about.

Furthermore, if others do not understand you, the fault almost never lies with those others.

Quote from: David R;255962Invisible ? Maybe in Australia but certainly not in the States or even here in Malaysia. You are not aware of the references in pop culture to the hobby ?

It's pretty tiny, let's be honest here. We have a profile marginally higher than that of stamp collectors.

Quote from: David RIMO they are. We are generally a superficial society. Nobody really takes the time to study the issues. We see this in poilitics, the media, most everywhere. Why should it be different when it comes to gaming scene.

The deeper you can see with a glance, the less long you have to look. How perceptive do we have to be to see that these movies take different perspectives?



If you think that the general public can't tell the difference between the perspectives of those two movies just from the posters, you must have a very low opinion of the public indeed.

Quote from: David RWell yeah, I meant, talk about the games that people actually play. I mentioned Exalted and White Wolf games, both which have sexual content. Feel free to mention games that are universally mocked by most gamers or not played or games that most gamers aren't even aware off.

You're missing the point. I never said that deviant sexual stuff was part of mainstream gaming, nor that I ever expected it to be. What I said was that a nasty minority can come to represent a group as a whole to the general public - whether that group likes it or not.

We're in no danger of every D&D player putting down their minis and taking up a ball gag and nipple clamp. But that people take lonely losers at cons and supershockedegycool Forgers to represent the hobby? That's plausible. Whether it'd actually happen I can't say. But it's plausible. It's not insane.

Quote from: David RExactly, behaviour of gamers and designers. This is what I've been saying. Content does not draw as much attention as behaviour.

Absolutely. But we're told that "System Matters" - therefore content influences behaviour. Now, I've always said people come first, and that you in the group get all the credit and the blame for everything that happens in it.

Nonetheless, game content encourages or discourages certain in-character actions. It would be hard not to be silly in Paranoia or Hackmaster, for example. What's happening there is that something in the game speaks to something in the person - in those cases, humour.

No game can bring out something that wasn't already there. So if someone plays Game X and sick shit comes out, that sick shit was there already. Frankly I think some shit should stay hidden and unsaid.

Quote from: David Ryou do realize that players will do terrible stuff in games sometimes without even having to have a context.

Sure. People do nasty shit, and have nasty fantasies. Why encourage it?

Quote from: David RThese games are grim. Why is it so hard to believe that some people may actually like that.

There's grim and then there's just plain old nasty shit. They're different things.

Pundit, here are three relevant posts by Andy K.

http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=9453928&postcount=218
http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=9462155&postcount=383
http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=9462342&postcount=392

Quote from: Narf the MouseAnd, more precisely, if it was in the original, how would not including it not be a gross misrepresentation?

See, this is why I get creeped out by a lot of anime - When I learn about the stuff they take out for the NA versions.

Yeah, this is the "broad discussion of responsibility in presentation of translated and adapted works" that I alluded to.

There are a lot of problems. If you try to make a "good" adaptation out of a questionable source is the result necessarily tainted by the source? For example, let's say someone remakes Breakfast at Tiffany's without the appalling portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi. Should the new film suffer due to the association with the original? (I'm not saying Breakfast at Tiffany's is a terrible movie, far from it, but you really have to make allowances for the times--and then some--when it comes to that part.)

I'd take it case by case--in this example, I'd say "no". But the objectionable element in Breakfast at Tiffany's is peripheral to the movie as a whole. Could you "rehabilitate" Birth of a Nation by making it an SF flick and changing a few story elements around? Sure, someone who knew nothing of the original might find nothing offensive in it, but would that make it okay? I'm not sure it would.

Beyond this issue of association, there's also the question of whether an adaptation that merely "tones down" a fundamentally offensive element is really accomplishing anything. E.g., yeah, you've got these undeniably problematic elements found in anime culture: stuff like gratuitous panty shots, the presentation of both obviously childlike figures in a sexualized manner, and conversely, ridiculously overdeveloped sex symbols, though often still portrayed as juvenile or submissive. (Just visit any site that sells character figurines from anime and you're bound to find examples.) Sure, there's a fine line--or is it a slippery slope--between "cute" and/or "cheesecake" and "creepy obsession"...but look: eventually you hit video games where the idea is to abduct girls on the subway and rape them, which after a "breaking in period", they come to enjoy.

I don't care if playing these games encourages this or that. I suppose there's a sliver of a chance that you might get a sort of knowing "campy" frisson but most likely, if you're into rape-video-games, you're messed up. Even moreso if you're an American so you don't have the excuse that "it's normalized in my culture". The same goes, to a lesser degree, for other stuff--the borderline pedophilia, the gigantic-boobed sword maidens. (If you're past your teens, heterosexual, and you can't get off to a skin mag or Cinemax, but you actually prefer these things enough to drop $70 per figurine...there's probably something wrong.)

So, if you're still with me: you've got a game, or a cartoon or whatever, and it has extreme elements. You can cut them out, sure, but in this case, the rest of the material isn't really any different from the offensive elements, it's just a lesser degree.

So now we come to Maid. I haven't read the game, I'm not really very interested in it although I enjoy "zany" anime. But here's what I see: the example of play that was written into the original rules, and which has caused such a furore now, is like the underwater part of the iceberg. You can hide it but you know that the subgenre has a fetishistic quality beneath the surface that gives it much of its zing--and which in certain hands can lead in unpleasant directions.

Is it better to submerge that element by editing the work, or to leave it in but add some sort of commentary, in a foreword, that will help the reader understand the material without endorsing it? E.g. I think we can watch Birth of a Nation or The Merchant of Venice these days without being complicit in the bigotry found in those works. The same goes for other works that are, perhaps, less obviously offensive, but in those cases it's even more important to be conscious of their shortcomings.

Still, we are talking about a game here, not an academic study. If the game can be rendered into usable form through judicious editing, maybe it'd be better to excise the offending material so it won't distract, and provide a means to access it along with commentary. I believe that's the path Andy K's currently planning.

But what do I know--I've been editing and re-editing this post for quite a while. Really I don't have any definitive answers, and I certainly don't have all the information.

Quote from: Narf the Mouse;255982It's not about huddling. It's about emerging impressions and not wishing those impressions to consist of creepy wierdos.

Newsflash: the impression is already creepy weirdos. It can only get better.

Well, then, those works certainly aren't helping.

What, exactly, is your position and aim in coming in to this discussion?

Hm. Just read a review on rpg.net.

Boils down to saying it's a light and fun comedy game - it's got a bit of sexual stuff, but "those who have enjoyed a few of the more comical (or even hardcore) hentai titles will probably find it to be laugh out loud funny like I did".

And hey, who wouldn't want to get a group of the guys together to pretend to be characters in pornography...:eek:

I think the 'hentai' part says all I need to know about it.

No, not in a good way.