thread: 2009-05-07 : Roleplaying Sinner, Repent!
On 2009-05-07, Marco wrote:
Well, these are on a different scale than I was thinking (railroading! Illusionism! Deprotagonization! GM-Chrysler—oh, wait different term ...).
But to start with this list before I do my own:
1. Agree. If you're going to spend time doing something, take it seriously and do it well. I don't find the "it's just a game" necessarily bad-wrong but it's not for me either.
2. Business-practices, yeah. But, again, with you it's small. I'm not raging at the splat-book machine. I'm not gonna be revolution-guy against the Corporate RPG-Model.
3. Fictional Content: I dunno about 'a sin'—but I find RaHoWa to be morally bankrupt. I find FATAL to be infantile and disgusting. I didn't mind the book-of-vile-whatever and I'm not going to set a line in the sand.
There could, I suppose, be a game that had a sophisticated take on racism (in a way that you'd play a racist of some sort in a manner that wasn't objectionable)—but I cannot think of one and I would not think highly of a game that tried (the whole orc-genocide thing is missing the point as, I think, was wonderfully pointed out on Story Games not long ago when a guy decrying racism in D&D was interested in Wild West games ... uh ... ok). Having reviewed this, I realized I found Gran Torino to be a sophisticated take on a racist hero. If you aren't anywhere near that standard of quality, I'd suggest you reconsider your motivations for playing that game.
I don't find kpfs objectionable nor Poison'd. I do think bragging about getting your Id on in a public fora with a we-so-baaad vibe is pretty much, well, like I just described it—but that's the players, not the game or the subject material.
I also think "Let's play Evil D&D and fantasize about kidnapping and raping the princess with a bunch of my (mostly guy) friends" to be objectionable the way that the fiction written by one of the high-school shooters was objectionable: it's bad fiction, it doesn't say anything good about you, and if you don't have the good taste to be embarrassed by it then there's probably something missing in your social skills.
I do believe there can be individual games, however, where those topics are dealt with in a sophisticated manner and while I might differ with a given take on it I don't have the same visceral objection to it (sans the bragging, of course—when you're bragging about it we're back to square one).
I don't have a bright line in the sand for this though so I doubt there's much meat there to object to.
What else have we got?
1. Nullifying Player Input because the GM has an illegitimate agenda (as determined by simple, fairly consistent social conventions). More prosaically: this can be called railroading (or other things like illusionism and 'participationism.')
2. I think intentionally trying to brutalize other players because you 'can' and the rules 'let you' is like always intentionally choosing a restaurant you like that someone in your group of 'friends' hates because you like watching her suffer and it's "your turn to pick"—it's a dick thing to do even if it's "legal."
I'll think of more later—but I think my #1 is most ripe for discussion: is it legitimate for, say, RTD for the GM to shut down a player action for the good of the story?
-Marco
