Casanova, homosexuality and underage sex

[Balbinus]

Hi Max,

As a rule, please don't issue comparative RPG.net/Forge challenges. There's no reason that any particular topic here should "match" its discussion there, or vice versa.

Speaking specifically and non-comparatively regarding the Forge, you'll have to come up with a topic with more meat than this one to get much more discusssion of worth.

Basically, what you're saying has nothing to do with Narrativism vs. Simulationism. You're talking about depth of Simulationist experience and (in personal terms) emotional commitment to playing outside of one's own values.

And what can we say about this? Nothing. We know you'd like to do it. We know that you wish other role-players would like it more, or were better at it. The only possible response is, "Neat. Now we know one possible way that you, Max, want to play."

That's it. Nothing more to say. It's not much of a topic.

Best,
Ron

Ron,

The rpg.net reference was in response to the suggestion that I would experience a problem with flames for posting the same stuff there.  Sorry if it was inappropriate, I would note though that the comparison was already in the thread.

As for the no topic point, I've been away over the weekend but on my return I have already noticed a number of interesting posts and examples.  Mike has a great post which I will need some time to work through, MJ Young's comments are interesting (and I'm glad the initial choice of example didn't bar him once discussion progressed, sorry for that MJ), Chris, Brian, John and others have good points.  People are saying things.

Put another way, I'm seeing discussion which is interesting and sheds light (in particular the discussion of personality reinforcement mechanics) on the issues I've raised.  I'm a little surprised to see that apparently quashed with a declaration that there is not much of a topic.  Surely if the topic is not of interest to you the answer is simply not to respond?  If there is nothing to say it will naturally drift off the first page without further answers, if there are further answers equally it must be that some people have something to say.

[M. J. Young]

MJ Young's comments are interesting (and I'm glad the initial choice of example didn't bar him once discussion progressed, sorry for that MJ)

It's O.K. As I said, I didn't want to come out saying that games that promote fantasy pedophilia are bad things without being able to phrase it in a more rational manner (after all, apart from being trained a theologian, I've got a degree in law). It kind of took me aback, as I've got a couple of articles "in the bullpen" about sex and gender issues in roleplaying games for my Faith and Gaming series (alas, I believe they go up at the beginnings of July and August, respectively), in which I suggest that whether such play is appropriate or proper is very much dependent on the players. I think that some of the things proposed here would be over the line for me--but not for everyone. After all, there are some people who would have trouble with their own gender identity if they played a woman, and I do that all the time with no qualms. I have a regular discussion with a Baptist pastor friend, and we got on Song of Solomon (a very sexual book of the Bible), and I observed that if we understand this right, King Solomon is explaining to us how women feel by portraying the feelings of the woman in the text--he is in essence roleplaying the bride so he, and we, can understand her. My friend responded that he always tries to think as a woman when he prepares his sermons, because he often finds insights into the materials that women get and men miss, if he can get into that perspective. Getting into someone else's perspective through role playing is wonderful.

Somewhere around here there's an old thread in which I described the night our entire family traded roles--we each played someone else in the family for something over an hour or two. We all learned a lot about each other, and about ourselves, by seeing how others in the family see us and showing how we see them. Really, other than the question of whether a particular gamer wants to go there, how is this different?

--M. J. Young

[simon_hibbs]

I think the most effective way this can be introduced in roleplaying games you've hit upon above already.

Picture the players in the game with Casanova as an NPC.
Introduce "little girl"
See "little girl" flirt with Casanova
See Casanova express surprise but arrange the liason
Allow players to react.  At some appropriate intersection have them become aware that the mother already knows.  Have whoever else the players are protesting to express shock and amazement that the players are so outraged (assuming they are).

In other words...break the players into what is considered "normal" for the society by allowing them to witness it...Connecticut Yankee style.

This part I cannot agree with on any level.

The characters are from a culture in which girls below the 'modern' age of consent are allowed to be sexualy active. The characters presumably should know this. They have presumably lived in this culture all their lives and accept this as a fact of life, yet rather than tell the players so that they can roleplay their characters appropriately, you set them up so that they can't help but play their characters in an inapropriate way.

Why are you introducing this scene in this way? The characters are not Connecticut Yankees, although the players might be. You're deliberately setting up the players in a situation where you're minimizing the chance that they will be able to play their characters realisticaly. Why? What is your motivation?

It seems to me you are manipulating the game situation for purposes
that are purely metagame, and highly dubious ones to boot.


Simon Hibbs

[Valamir]

Simon,
Characters are not real.  You can say all you want about "play your character" and "be immersive", but at the end of the day, characters are imaginary.  They are not and never will be real.

The greatest actor in the world will never be able to play a character exactly as that character would have existed no matter how much study he does.  

You can try to be as immersive as possible but you will never completely exorcize the metagame experiences of your own life from your portrayal and you will never fully understand the character and what the character knows as well as the actual character would if he was real.

So given that 1) metagame influence will ALWAYS be >0%, and 2) your portrayal of your character will NEVER be 100% realistic; your point becomes one of quibbling not over metagame vs no metagame but how much metagame is tolerable; and not one of realistic vs not realistic, but how not realistic you can be to maintain suspension of disbelief.  This then is a matter of personal preference that there is no right or wrong answer to.  

But in the end, it is not the characters who are being hooked by a scene.  Characters can NEVER be hooked by anything.  They are figments which don't exist.  Only PLAYERS can be hooked by a scene and therefor the GM must communicate in a manner that the PLAYER can understand.  If that involves setting things up in order to penetrate a player's metagame knowledge (i.e. that set of assumptions about life that all players carry with them) in a manner that may perhaps not be a "purist" portrayal, than so be it.  This is common practice in historical novels and period plays anyway.

The alternative is to that is either 1) expect your players to be walking period encyclopedias and to have read all the same source material as you, or 2) play something else.

[simon_hibbs]

So given that 1) metagame influence will ALWAYS be >0%, and 2) your portrayal of your character will NEVER be 100% realistic; your point becomes one of quibbling not over metagame vs no metagame but how much metagame is tolerable; and not one of realistic vs not realistic, but how not realistic you can be to maintain suspension of disbelief.  This then is a matter of personal preference that there is no right or wrong answer to.  

I disagree. Games involve a social contract between players and the referee. What it is right or wrong to do in that game is based on that social contract. I don't think many game social contracts contain within them a clause that the GM can deliberately withhold information from players that their characters have, and set them up to get embarrased due to that lack of information.

But in the end, it is not the characters who are being hooked by a scene.  Characters can NEVER be hooked by anything.  They are figments which don't exist.  Only PLAYERS can be hooked by a scene and therefor the GM must communicate in a manner that the PLAYER can understand.

I think you've jumped threads. I'm not arguing that characters are non-fictional. That may or may not be, but it is irrelevent to this situation. This isn't about player/character motives or attitudes, it's about player/character information. Do you realy think it's fair to deliberately withhold obviosuly relevent information from players that their characters have? What kind of game social contract do you think best supports that kind of approach to play? Does your gaming group have a social contract that supports or encourages this, and how does that work in practice?

If that involves setting things up in order to penetrate a player's metagame knowledge (i.e. that set of assumptions about life that all players carry with them) in a manner that may perhaps not be a "purist" portrayal, than so be it.  This is common practice in historical novels and period plays anyway.

I'm not clear what you mean by this. Can you give some examples of what you mean here (re. historical novels or period plays)?

The alternative is to that is either 1) expect your players to be walking period encyclopedias and to have read all the same source material as you, or 2) play something else.

(1) Is rediculous. If you as GM are specificaly setting up a situation where a minor propositions a player characters, it's blindingly obvious that the social mores concerning that, which the character must be aware of, are relevent information to the player. Communicating that information to the player is a trivial task.

(2) Is very sensible. I'd have to seriously consider whether I want to play a game in which information relevent to the game, and which is obviously available in the game world to my character, is denied me, apparently purely in order to amuse the GM. I find it hard to imagine circumstances in which I'd find that acceptable.


Simon Hibbs

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Quickie note that Max is right, and this thread is kicking along just fine. I was getting perturbed after the first page, but then people sort of invented the focus, and all is well.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

This then is a matter of personal preference that there is no right or wrong answer to.  

I disagree. Games involve a social contract between players and the referee. What it is right or wrong to do in that game is based on that social contract.

Now slow down a bit Simon.  You opened your last post by saying "you cannot agree on any level".  If you want to amend that to caveat individual groups social contract rather than a blanket opposition, you'll find we're in agreement.  After all "a matter of personal preference that there is no right or wrong answer to" is precisely an issue that would get worked out within the social contract.

I think you've jumped threads. I'm not arguing that characters are non-fictional. That may or may not be, but it is irrelevent to this situation. This isn't about player/character motives or attitudes, it's about player/character information. Do you realy think it's fair to deliberately withhold obviosuly relevent information from players that their characters have? What kind of game social contract do you think best supports that kind of approach to play? Does your gaming group have a social contract that supports or encourages this, and how does that work in practice?

Haven't jumped threads at all.  There is no "intentional witholding of information" going on anywhere in this thread.  The entire thread is about how to get the setting/cultural specific information into the hands of the player to begin with.

In other words:
1) There is unique game world information on a social / cultural level that would be sufficiently of an alien nature that the GM can not assume the players have an appropriate mindset.
2) Exploring the difference between our mindset and that of the period is a desireable outcome of play (from the very first post).

How then does one get this information that the players do not currently have INTO their hands.  I submit there is only 1 of 3 ways.

1) Expect them to read up in advance and become literate on the subject before play (which we both agree is unlikely).

2) Frequently interrupt play for interludes of "what your character knows" exposition.  Occassionally this is useful...most often it is collossally tedius and boring...like a text book being haphazardly delivered by a GM.

3) Find a way to introduce elements of this mindset to the players DURING PLAY in a way that doesn't interrupt the narrative but still serves to highlight how different the culture is from the players innate assumptions.


My Connecticut Yankee technique is one such method of delivering the information.  It is not intended to be a "got you" or a "now your character looks stupid" event.  It is a technique whose purpose is entirely targeted AT THE PLAYER.

This "at the player" is where my discussion of players being real and characters being fictional fits in.  At the end of the day it is entirely irrelevant what a character may or may not know, unless you have a way of getting that knowledge to the player.

This technique is designed to give the PLAYER that "ahhhhh, so this world has a different set of mores than I'm used to" moment of understanding in a way that is driven home much more powerfully than simply reading a list of "things you should know" bullets.

If that involves setting things up in order to penetrate a player's metagame knowledge (i.e. that set of assumptions about life that all players carry with them) in a manner that may perhaps not be a "purist" portrayal, than so be it.  This is common practice in historical novels and period plays anyway.

I'm not clear what you mean by this. Can you give some examples of what you mean here (re. historical novels or period plays)?

What I mean is simply this.  All players carry with them "what they know" as players.  This includes the moral and ethical knowledge of whatever culture they are from / familiar with.  Since characters are not real, players can only have their character act based on their own knowledge.  This is why metagame is impossible to completely purge from play.

For example: if the setting is the 1820s deep American south set among the plantation aristocracy, there is a certain mindset about slavery, the superiority of the white race, the peculiarly American version of Noblesse Oblige, etc.  For most modern players with modern egalatarian ideals and the benefit of decades of the civil rights movement to draw upon, this is a very alien mind set.  How is a player supposed to accurately portray a character in such a setting, without that character behaving in an anachronistic manner colored by the player's modern sensibilities.

Alternatively the contrast between the player's modern sensibilities and the period reality may be the entire point of play in which case you literally do have a "Connecticut Yankee" scenario where the Audience (i.e. the player as Audience) is the Connecticut Yankee observing the goings ons.

One way to get players to know how their character should be acting is to illustrate the behavior.  In many novels there is a character who is inconsequential to the actual story of enormous importance in translating the story for the reader.

As examples take Last of the Mohicans or The Virginian.

In both of these novels the main characters are infinitely familiar with the setting...Pre Revolutionary New York Indian Tribes and Frontier Life in the first, and Itinerant Cow Hands in the second.  In both of these novels the setting is pretty much unknown to the reader.  In both of these novels there are characters whose primary purpose is to witness the events as an outsider sees them so all of the stuff that the main characters would take for granted and never think twice about have the opportunity to be displayed.

For an SF example, the 5 novel Exordium series (with some of the best most believable and most alien cultures ever devised for a SF universe), also has secondary characters who are somewhat outsiders and who exist primarily for the benefit of the reader.


Now all of these use minor characters to interpret the actions of the major character for the reader.  So one possible way to do this in an RPG is to have the players observe NPC interactions.

Thing is...Watching NPCs interact with other NPCs for any length of time is inherently boring.  The PLAYERS need to be involved.  So, the technique of translating the necessary information moves from the secondary characters to the PCs in order to keep the PLAYERS involved and interested...regardless of how much sense it does or doesn't make for the CHARACTER to be in such a situation, it is the PLAYERS that need to be involved...else they might as well be watching a play.

(2) I'd have to seriously consider whether I want to play a game in which information relevent to the game, and which is obviously available in the game world to my character, is denied me, apparently purely in order to amuse the GM. I find it hard to imagine circumstances in which I'd find that acceptable.
Simon Hibbs

I am at a complete loss as to where the idea of information is being intentionally denied for the amusement of anyone.  The entire point of the thread is how to deliver information, not how to withhold it.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

1) expect your players to be walking period encyclopedias and to have read all the same source material as you[/quote]
There ways around this.

"You are approached by a young girl of about eleven or twelve....uh in this society the age of consent is considerably younger. In our society it is the equivilent of being 18. Young yet adult."

[Valamir]

Sure...but that's hardly as powerful in terms of its impact on the player.  In fact, all you're really doing is reducing it to trivial color.

Nothing about the player's mindset is being challenged here.  All's he's doing is translating your 11-12 year old into 18 years old in his head, and then proceeding to play exactly as if you'd just made her an 18 year old to begin with.  IMO not very compelling, and not very illustrative either.

YMMV, OC

[Jack Spencer Jr]

True, and thus the problem with examples. I am just of the mind that it is possible to explore the new, unfamiliar worl without having every single session being a Conneticut Yankee story which, IMO would be a feature similar to the party mentality (see the other recent thread) and make roleplay take on a paculularity that is not about the medium but about the players choices. That is, a group can chose to play Conneticut Yankee, that's their choice. But Roleplaying does not need to be Conneticut Yankee to compelling, either.

[Valamir]

Quite, I was highlighting 1 method that I think would work best for the particular subject matter used as an example at the beginning of the thread.  Certainly overusing this technique would have its own set of problems.

[M. J. Young]

Nothing about the player's mindset is being challenged here.  All's he's doing is translating your 11-12 year old into 18 years old in his head, and then proceeding to play exactly as if you'd just made her an 18 year old to begin with.

Ah, but is that a mistake?

If we're talking about enabling the players to play their characters appropriately and experience the world as period characters, wouldn't it be exactly right for them to think the way you're attempting to avoid? If an 18 year old girl made advances on me, I would have a certain sort of reaction; if a 12 year old girl made advances on me, I would have a different sort of reaction. However, isn't part of the point of this that for the character I'm playing, if a 12 year old girl made advances on him, he would react in much the same manner as I would if an 18 year old made such advances on me?

As an aside, I think from what was cited in the source text, Cassanova was taken aback by the idea of a girl that young being interested. Perhaps all the player needs to know is that there are no laws about pedophilia in this realm (it obviously isn't England, which has been enforcing such laws for centuries), no legal age of consent. In that case he can be suitably shocked at the idea of a girl that young being interested without the accompanying reaction that this would be illegal.

There doesn't seem to be a really effective way to handle this specific situation. Ralph's method has merit because the player is likely to react almost appropriately (a girl that young is a surprise, even if there's no law about it); we find fault because somehow the player ought to be told that the concept "jail bait" has no meaning here. Yet there doesn't seem to be any simple way to convey to the player both that there's no legal or social stigma to the situation and that his character would be surpised by it.

Tough one indeed.

--M. J. Young

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I've been flopping back & forth on this, partially because I am of two minds on this issue, considering Jonathan's thread on the separation of Players & Characters. On the one hand the characters are not real, right. They are merely imaginary constructs in the players' heads. Therefore the characters do not have reactions, the players do. However, as imaginary people living in an imaginary world responding to imaginary stimuli, the characters do can conceivable have an imagined reaction, then. The players may then have a reaction to the imagined reation, as they have a reaction to every other item in the shared imagined space.

[simon_hibbs]

Sure...but that's hardly as powerful in terms of its impact on the player.  In fact, all you're really doing is reducing it to trivial color.

It is trivial colour. The setting has different conventions from our society. Why is that such a big deal?

Nothing about the player's mindset is being challenged here.  All's he's doing is translating your 11-12 year old into 18 years old in his head, and then proceeding to play exactly as if you'd just made her an 18 year old to begin with.  IMO not very compelling, and not very illustrative either.

YMMV, OC

I think that's the point. This is a situation the character would consider normal, so why try to fix things so that the player reacts in an abnormal way for the setting? You're breaking the game flow out of a roleplaying mode.


Simon Hibbs

[Valamir]

I don't know how to express it any differently than I've already done Simon.  Except to point out that you are operating from the assumption that immersion within a characters mindset is the primary goal (or even a goal) for all roleplaying.  It very well may be for you.  But you should start with an understanding that many think it is not only unnecessary but a tiresome and boring way to play.

As a player I want you to hook ME.  I want you to interest ME.
I have about zero interest in pretending my character is interested when I am not.

My character doesn't exist.  It is a piece of paper with numbers on it.  It can not be bored, shocked, surprised, annoyed, frustrated, or anything else.

I can.

The game should be directed at ME.  After all, I'm the one spending hours of my time choosing to play.  Hooking the character is a waste of effort if you don't hook the player.

What I took away from the first post was not so much an interest in how to play historically accurate characters.  

Which leads to the issue of what we miss out by not even trying to put ourselves in another culture's heads

My impression is that most gamers like only cosmetic differences

What's the point if when we go there everyone is just like us?

This is clearly about interesting and challenging the players.  Raising their awareness of the cultureal differences and allowing them as players to be stunned, impressed, horrified, revolted, or whatever.

The CHARACTERS may simply take everything for granted...so what...boring.  If the character simply treats a 12 year old the way we would treat an 18 year old, than we might as well just be playing in the modern world and run the scene with an 18 year old.  What's the point of exploring a different culture if all we do is translate it into something familiar.

IMO.  Collosal waste of time.  If you aren't going to actually USE the other culture as anything more than background color; stick to a culture everyone already knows and is familiar with and don't waste the effort.

If you're going to go to the time an effort of setting your game in a completely different culture. something that is intentionally NOT just American treehuggers with pointy ears; then it had best be something meaningful to the PLAYERS.  If its only meaningful to the characters its pointless.  Characters have no meaning.