thread: 2005-08-30 : Coming-of-age Fantasy for Adults
On 2005-09-02, Sven wrote:
I want to hear more about this stuff, Vincent. (And I am sure I will, but i just want to tell you). To really be able to deal with all adult subjects in role playing is one of the big great challanges. It has been done before, of course, but not often enough. And it's often hard.
Very often when I create a narrative (be it prose or a story for role playing) I get to a point when I put rape in the plot. Most of the times I erase, because I think "Why should I use that easy path to strong emotion. Isn't that tacky?".
You say: "But sex and violence, that's what adulthood is made of." You are right. Don't use it only to make emotional impact, but still, don't hesitate to use it in games, because we all need top think about these things. Or at least we want to.
As it happen I have during this year played rapist, pedofile, women beater and women abuser so many times that I will try to avoid those characters for a while. (Distributed over larp, freeform tabletop and traditional gaming). Most of these characters have been handed to me by other, by coincidences. We haven't dealt with these actions in the game though, it has all been my characters own angst and the drama of confession. Try look someone in the eye and confess rape. A terrifying experience, even when it's all pretend.
Dealing with rape brings the need of talking through what you want to do in the group (but I guess there is never any need of telling that to people with Forge heritage). At the moment I'm writing a freeform game (scenario) were there will be one rape scene. It's a very small part of the scenario, but perhaps the most tricky.
