So I'd like to talk about a particular event in the weekend's "Lord of the Rings" RPG session, and get people's opinions on it. This was I think the fourth session of the campaign. It is set during the time of the War of the Ring, and set in the area of Lake-town and Mirkwood. The PCs are Thallen (a human bounty hunter from Lake-town), Ardan (an elf of Mirkwood and carousing soldier), Borri (a dwarven craftsman, nephew of Bombur), and my PC Gudrid (a Beorning woman, cousin of Grimbeorn and studier of nature magic).

There were many problems, but I want to focus on a particular incident regarding my PC Gudrid. She is of the family of Beorn's wife: so not blood kin of him, but cousin to his son Grimbeorn. I had that she studied healing arts, herbcraft, and magic from the women of her clan. She could speak with animals, send an animal messenger, and even transform into animals. The rules allowed her to change into any natural animal. In previous sessions I had transformed into a bear and a horse. However, over email just before this session, the GM had expressed balance concerns that magic was too easy. I suggested restricting Mastery of Shapes to three forms (as that was her most potent ability), but the GM decided to limit her to only two: bear and horse.

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We had just travelled for a long month, trying to catch a darkly-dressed rider who we believed was headed to Dol Guldur (a stronghold of evil in southern Mirkwood). We knew he had recovered a ring from among the bones of Smaug, betrayed his partners, and rode off taking only the ring while leaving a horde of precious gems behind. We had caught up with him the previous day, apparently sleeping beside the trail. However, when Ardan tried to grab him while asleep, he instantly disappeared and his horse disappeared shortly thereafter. Two trolls then came out of the woods to attack us. We eventually killed them, and tried to find tracks of him.

After a long day of tracking and various distractions, we again spotted his horse tied beside the trail. Anxious that he might disappear again, the others started to circle around to try to box him in. Suddenly I had an idea. I transformed myself into a black horse which looked like his. I thought I would try to switch places with his horse, which might confuse him during his escape. So I walked up to horse and spoke to it.

Now, at this point, the GM hedged a bit and said "Gee, I hate to do this to a PC" -- but then he went on to pointedly say "This horse is a stallion". I sort of shrugged, but others caught the sexual implication he was making. Another player pointed out that a stallion would have no interest in mare unless it was in heat. The GM then ruled that "Humans are always in heat, so that stays when she transforms into a horse". Now, nothing eventually happened from this -- I ended up using an Animal Messenger spell on it to send it away. However, I certainly felt something was wrong here. Another of the players also objected to the ruling.

It's not like I can say that it's "unrealistic" for a human magician to always turn into an animal in heat. Nor can I say that it was railroading or deprotagonization for my PC, per se. Still, it definitely ticked me off and made me feel that the GM had some screwy problem with my PC being female. The other player who spoke up said that after what happened, she was glad that she didn't make a female PC.

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So I guess my questions are:

• Did this cross some sort of line, and how do you draw that line?
• Is there anything that can be done in game design to head this sort of thing off?


One thing that I noted about the LotR RPG core book is that not only are all six example characters male, but all of the example players are male as well. It also makes a point of saying that you cannot play a female dwarf. (?) I'm not sure that this had any affect on this game, but it's something that I noticed in my review.

Now, I definitely don't want to do away with gender roles. My PC Gudrid here is not a sword-swinging barbarian: she is a healer and magician with no combat skills and no direct combat spells. (She can turn into a bear, but it takes her a full minute to change and the bear stats are pretty wimpy, so I basically did nothing in 3 of the 4 combats we've had.) I wouldn't have a problem if someone were to take a romantic interest in her, say. But on the spot of talking with a horse to rule that she is constantly in heat just crosses a line for me.

Any thoughts?

This is very odd, and somehow creepy. On the one hand, it sort of sounds to me as though maybe the GM was hoping for some crude high-school "getting it on" jokes. Given that you are in your 30's, I'm guessing that the whole group is rather too old for that sort of thing unless everybody seems pretty into it, and clearly they weren't. Could be a basic maturity question.

Another possibility is that he was trying to prevent you from doing something clever by making up a dumb obstacle, but it does seem a strange choice. I'm suggesting this because you already had him blocking you from using written powers from the game, and given that the bear form doesn't sound particularly powerful I wonder about that "balance" thing.

Knowing you, I'd like to ask one other question: how well does this GM know you, as a player? If he knows you quite well, he may be somewhat afraid of you, to be blunt. He sounds like a fairly classic control-freak Illusionist, and you have a habit of challenging the edges of that sort of thing in a way that's difficult to block by ordinary means. Just wondering whether this may be more about you than about female characters -- could he be trying desperately to keep you from doing anything interesting or unexpected?

As to LOTR, I don't know the game, but it is worth noting that The Hobbit has no female characters -- not one! -- and there are very few in the trilogy. I don't think that's excuse enough for this extreme gender bias, but you might think about it as a possible reason.

With respect to gender in gaming as a general point of design, I don't see that it's much different from any other medium. Does it make any difference whether some of the player examples are female, regardless of the sexes of their characters? Yes -- it reminds everyone more or less subtly that 50% of potential players (hypothetically, anyway) are female.

But beyond this basic point -- rather like using "he or she" instead of "he" -- I really have an ugly feeling about this situation. Maybe we're both over-reading (although another player agreed) but I just get the sneaking suspicion that this guy to some degree thinks of females as passive sexual objects. I shouldn't even say that, since I don't know him at all, nor have you provided more than one example, but for some reason it just strikes me that way.

John Kim wrote:

• Is there anything that can be done in game design to head this sort of thing off?

clehrich wrote: With respect to gender in gaming as a general point of design, I don't see that it's much different from any other medium. Does it make any difference whether some of the player examples are female, regardless of the sexes of their characters? Yes -- it reminds everyone more or less subtly that 50% of potential players (hypothetically, anyway) are female.

Yeah, that does seem kind of creepy and off, but I suspect that Clehrich was correct and the response was more about stopping you following your course of action that any kind of reaction to your playing a female character.

To look at it another way, what if the situation had been reversed, and a trasnformed male character had drawn the attention of a female animal - would that seem creepy in the way?

See? This is what happens when dudes play chicks.

- J, "I'm just sayin'..."

I think there are a number of problems here.

Firstly, your GM is running the wrong game. LotR, if we're talking the Decipher version, quite consciously discards play balance in favour of emulating the source material. To try to suddenly reinsert it is bound to end badly IMO.

Far more seriously, your GM has issues which sound frankly odd. The always on heat thing was either a joke in very poor taste, a sign of extreme discomfort with female characters or a very clumsy attempt to block player creativity (or a mix of all three). Whichever, I would be very uncomfortable in your game, the GM is arbitrarily messing with character concepts and in a rather unpleasant way.

The big warning for me is the "I hate to do this to a PC" comment. The answer to that is obvious. Don't. Why is the horse a stallion? Because the GM made it so. Why are transformed magi always on heat (a very peculiar judgement IMO), because the GM said so. It's all GM fiat, there is no stallion objectively existing forcing the poor GM to screw over (no pun intended) your character.

This isn't a system problem IMO, nor with all due respect to Jared's peculiar obsession with the subject is it a problem with people playing PCs of the opposite gender, the problem is a GM who appears to have issues with women and issues with characters not behaving as he wishes them to.

Out of interest, were the other problems in the game compatible with the theory that the GM was uncomfortable with player creativity outside the bounds of his scenario?

John,

I'm going to admit I've gotten spoiled by the cross-table communication at my games. Still - why didn't you just ask the GM, "Hey - take a break for a minute. This scene is seeming strange and uncomfortable to me, and I was wondering why you're taking it in this direction."

If you can't do that, it seems like a bigger problem than this GM's particular sexual hang-ups. (I'm not saying it's your problem, by the way. Would this GM have responded well to that?)

John Kim wrote:
So I guess my questions are:

• Did this cross some sort of line, and how do you draw that line?
• Is there anything that can be done in game design to head this sort of thing off?

Hi John,

Some of the following mirrors others' responses ...

Damn, but I wish this all happened a few months ago; I would have asked your permission to include it among the many testimonials in Sex & Sorcery.

What you've got here is the issue of Denial, Dysfunction, and Function when it comes to including anything about sexuality, gender, or (bluntly) horniness in the in-game world.

Denial = uh-uh, none of that, our characters aren't about that, there isn't any of that, where's the foe, where's the puzzle, where's the story, where are we going next. Basically, Ken & Barbie do a fantasy game.

Dysfunction = using sexual innuendo and/or graphic events to mess with one another as real people, ranging from the GM going "snuffle snuffle" when a dog encounters a passed-out female player-character to the infamous "the orc bandit leader rapes you four times that night" scene. These examples are taken from actual play.

Function = including sexual material as in-game material in such a way that it serves the imaginative, creative purpose at hand, which necessarily means that the sexual or semi-sexual interactions among the real people have to be engaged in a way which I can only call "real" or "adult" in full knowledge that these terms aren't precise.

Speaking over here from my armchair, I peg your GM as doin' some Dysfunction in this instance. What it's "about," I don't know. His comment "I hate to do this to a PC" is of course bullshit; if he truly "hated" to do it, then he wouldn't. I'd be awfully interested whether, if your character were male, he would have confronted him with a mare in heat.

However - I betcha that if called on it, he'd have all manner of excuses. "It's realistic." "Real stories have sex in them." Blah blah ... all of which boils down to issues of story-control (perhaps you guys were being tactical regarding this NPC in a way he didn't like, e.g.).

The way to disperse such blather is to think in terms of aesthetics and goals. Here you guys have this situation concerning hard-core Middle Earth material, like the ring in Smaug's bones and Dol Guldur and whatnot. Your character fits that perfectly, as does the nephew of the canonical dwarf. See what I mean? Your characters and the ostensible point of play are all firing on the same cylinders, to celebrate the richness of Middle Earth material and perhaps do some "underbelly" role-playing with canonical material.

And then here comes all this stuff about equine pheromones and (God help us) a stallion-esque ramrod of steaming pink, and who knows what extremes of nudging and winking about what your character "has to do." It's not the decency or properness or "appropriateness" of the imagery that bugs me, though - it's the sharp-left-turn from the shared aesthetics of play.

Does anyone remember all those suspense thriller movies from the 1980s and early 90s, in which the detective is tracking the killer and he's not sure whether the girl he's met is connected to the killer, or maybe is the killer, and all that crap? Jennifer 8, Sea of Love, Knight Moves, etc. Right in the middle of each one, there's this kind of red-light sex scene which has, frankly, nothing to do with the story. It's just a soft-porn sequence, thrown in for the ratings and for its own sake, and perhaps to cover the fact that the actual story is a flaccid mess.

That's what this anecdote reminds me of. I'll betcha a copy of Sex & Sorcery that your-all's tactics regarding this NPC were out of the GM's comfort zone of control of the upcoming events. I'll betcha he even had plans for that horse in the upcoming scene, or at the very least, anticipated that you'd ask questions of the horse that he wanted to keep secret for some future-planned revelation. The entire point was to keep "the GM screen" up in terms of information exchange - so he threw a big wall at you, purposefully spiced with the hard-to-port-ensign innuendo, in order to back you up and head you off and keep you bloody away from his control of what was going on.

Best,
Ron

Again not knowing the GM in question its hard to put a finger on what exactly is the problem here.

I would ask three questions:

1) Does he do this to other players ie does he treat the female player badly in gerneral or just female PCs?

2) Where does he scientifically get the idea that Humans are always in heat? Always fertile is not necassarily always in heat and what if your character is a cold fish or can't function that way? I mean there are enough variables to warrant a role... also of course if the Rider knows his horse, maybe he would have noticed the uh difference. However if you could explain the rule for it to those os us not having LOtR, when you said a horxe just like his horse, why did you not also become a stallion?

3) Were you the only character who had to have "balance" added?

Creepy

Sean
ADGBoss

ADGBoss wrote: 2) Where does he scientifically get the idea that Humans are always in heat? Always fertile is not necassarily always in heat and what if your character is a cold fish or can't function that way? I mean there are enough variables to warrant a role... also of course if the Rider knows his horse, maybe he would have noticed the uh difference. However if you could explain the rule for it to those os us not having LOtR, when you said a horxe just like his horse, why did you not also become a stallion?

I was there too and this is my take on it:

Before this happened, some of us had been making tacky "I mount you... hahahaha" jokes. Which was funny at first but may have also gone over the line, because we kept doing it in a kind of escalating series of obnoxious one-upmanship. This probably contributed to the line-crossing of the GM, who frankly doesn't seem like he hangs around very many women, and was thinking "Hey, look, a girl who jokes about sex, how freeing, now I can say anything!" But because I laugh at an elf/dwarf slash porn joke does that that mean it's open season, let's rape the female PC ? I think not...

When the GM tried to apply this "you're in heat" rule, most of us were saying "That's so wrong!" and shaking their heads. I said flat out that it was stupid. Actually I also sarcastically suggested that Gudrid keep track of her period, and that as a human she would be fertile around 14 days before the start of her period, and maybe her animal forms could be in heat then. This was ignored, and I dropped it.

<rant>However if I hadn't shut my mouth I would have added that I'd only accept "being on the rag" and "heat" simulation rules if teenage male characters had to roll every 5 minutes for "distracting and embarrassing erection" and in combat all male chars had to check each round for whether they're completely incapacitated by being kicked in the balls or not. </rant>

I was somewhat ticked off by this incident, but I realize if I had been playing Gudrid, I would have been absolutely over the edge furious. I have to think about that a bit and post later. But yeah, this is part of why I don't play female characters. The constant gender stereotyping or even the joking about stereotypes and sex become very wearying.

As far as game books go, I have had much better experiences playing in people's homebrew systems, and in fantasy worlds where sexism is not so bad as it is in our real world, or where it's at least different. I get enough of irritating patriarchy in real life. Sometimes I want to play with gender issues in games, but when that becomes just as frustrating as it is in RL, it's not fun.

Hello,

Hi Liz, welcome to the Forge!

This issue is so central to role-playing in my experience that I decided to frame an entire supplement for Sorcerer around it. This is kind of a roundabout set of links references, but at my Sex & Sorcery news update at the Sorcerer website, I list a bunch of Forge discussions about the new supplement's contents under development, and in them are linked some more general discussions. So my apologies for the weird mulberry-bush approach to links citations, but I'm presenting them 'cause John's & Liz's situation, as presented in this thread, is exactly why I wrote this supplement in the first place.

Best,
Ron

Balbinus wrote: This isn't a system problem IMO, nor with all due respect to Jared's peculiar obsession with the subject is it a problem with people playing PCs of the opposite gender, the problem is a GM who appears to have issues with women and issues with characters not behaving as he wishes them to.

Out of interest, were the other problems in the game compatible with the theory that the GM was uncomfortable with player creativity outside the bounds of his scenario?

Clinton R. Nixon wrote: I'm going to admit I've gotten spoiled by the cross-table communication at my games. Still - why didn't you just ask the GM, "Hey - take a break for a minute. This scene is seeming strange and uncomfortable to me, and I was wondering why you're taking it in this direction."

If you can't do that, it seems like a bigger problem than this GM's particular sexual hang-ups. (I'm not saying it's your problem, by the way. Would this GM have responded well to that?)

jrs wrote: I'm not sure how game design could specifically prevent this from happening. I mean, do you need rules to say that it might not be a good idea for the GM to tell a player that his character has an erection and will not be able to concentrate on anything else until he deals with it?

ADGBoss wrote: I would ask three questions:
1) Does he do this to other players ie does he treat the female player badly in gerneral or just female PCs?
2) Where does he scientifically get the idea that Humans are always in heat? [...]
3) Were you the only character who had to have "balance" added?

Ron Edwards wrote: This issue is so central to role-playing in my experience that I decided to frame an entire supplement for Sorcerer around it. This is kind of a roundabout set of links references, but at my Sex & Sorcery news update at the Sorcerer website, I list a bunch of Forge discussions about the new supplement's contents under development, and in them are linked some more general discussions. So my apologies for the weird mulberry-bush approach to links citations, but I'm presenting them 'cause John's & Liz's situation, as presented in this thread, is exactly why I wrote this supplement in the first place.

John Kim wrote: [However, this is a game design forum and I wanted somewhere to take the conversation other than just shrugging and saying "Dude, your GM's got issues."

Jack Spencer Jr wrote:

John Kim wrote: However, this is a game design forum and I wanted somewhere to take the conversation other than just shrugging and saying "Dude, your GM's got issues."

Dude, don't worry about it. The Forge as a site focuses on indie RPGs. This is the actual Play forum where we discuss what actually happens at the gaming table. Where we talk about things a tad more solid than theory. If it's a social issue like that, even those it really is outside of the scope of the sight to deal with it, we call a potato a potato.

Interesting post, John, and you're right. Too often people shrug and say 'get a better GM' when the problem either lies with, or is aggrivated, by the system. It also fairly obvious how this could be solved, a line added to the Mastery of Shapes ability (spell?) saying 'any character transformed into an animal has no sexual attraction to real animals'.

But what then if you wish to do the Loki thing listed above? I think that would be a clever and interesting use of the ability, and wouldn't like to see it curtailed in a rule simply there to make sure the GM isn't being an arse.

Hmm, how about 'when transforming into an animal the character can chose all aspects of the creatures form, including colouration, size, age and sex (within normal ranges for that animal)'? That actually might be kind of cool, since it would allow, for example, a player to transform into a juvenile and solicit sympathy from adult animals.

Perhaps an interesting question to be addressed by the rules is how transformed and real animals interact. Does a transformed player acquire knowledge of how the animal's communication and behaviour works, or will they attempt to smile and inadvertantly bare their teeth aggressively. Will they understand what that call actually means? Will their way of moving disturb real animals? How deeply do you want to model all of this anyway?

John Kim wrote: [Your argument seems to be the opposite of this. If a GM does something, we should hold only the GM responsible and not look at how the system influenced it. i.e. System Doesn't Matter.

I don't accept that. There are a number of things in Ron's essays that I don't agree with, but the basic point of "System Matters" is to me very clear. System is not neccesarily the most important factor, but it matters. Now, in that essay his examples are mainly GM/player authorship issues, but I think that it also applies to sex and gender issues, and a host of other issues as well.

John Kim wrote:

Jack Spencer Jr wrote:

John Kim wrote: However, this is a game design forum and I wanted somewhere to take the conversation other than just shrugging and saying "Dude, your GM's got issues."

Dude, don't worry about it. The Forge as a site focuses on indie RPGs. This is the actual Play forum where we discuss what actually happens at the gaming table. Where we talk about things a tad more solid than theory. If it's a social issue like that, even those it really is outside of the scope of the sight to deal with it, we call a potato a potato.

I feel like I'm repeating myself here, but let me try again... In many forums outside the Forge, if someone complains about his frustrations with -- say -- a railroading GM in Vampire, they will just be told "Your GM sucks. Deal with it. That's a problem with your GM, not with the system."

One of the nice things about The Forge is that people are working on ways to constructively change that. Just because the GM is responsible for railroading, that doesn't mean that the system doesn't have an influence -- and thus is in part responsible. Designers here mostly accept that responsibility, which may sometimes mean tilting at windmills (i.e. trying to solve the problem of a control-freak GM with mechanics), but at least they are trying.

Your argument seems to be the opposite of this. If a GM does something, we should hold only the GM responsible and not look at how the system influenced it. i.e. System Doesn't Matter.

I don't accept that. There are a number of things in Ron's essays that I don't agree with, but the basic point of "System Matters" is to me very clear. System is not neccesarily the most important factor, but it matters. Now, in that essay his examples are mainly GM/player authorship issues, but I think that it also applies to sex and gender issues, and a host of other issues as well.

Mr Jack wrote: Too often people shrug and say 'get a better GM' when the problem either lies with, or is aggrivated, by the system.

It also fairly obvious how this could be solved, a line added to the Mastery of Shapes ability (spell?) saying 'any character transformed into an animal has no sexual attraction to real animals'.

Addendum: This just came to me to illustrate my point.

Kids are playing dodge ball. One kid gets the ball and throws it right at another kid's groin, purposefully. Wham! Thud! That's gotta hurt. Now should the rules of dodge ball be augmented to disallow groin shots? I suppose an arguement can be made for it, but that solve nothing with the kids who hit the other kid in the groin on purpose. Did he have a problem with the other boy that he would try to really hurt him? Is he the sort who just likes to inflict as much pain as possible? These are the real cause of the problem and are not addressable by the rules of the game.

Hello,

So let's talk about System. As you guys all know, I tend to use this term awfully broadly, including such things as "standards for who gets to say what when, and make it stick." Yes, in many games, such standards are not explicitly written down as rules, whereas in some they are, and in many more, they are interpretable based on side-comments or meta-text of some kind.

What else can be included in System? It strikes me that in John's example, we're talking mainly about character creation and its contractual, procedural consequences for later play. That's a big deal, which I imagine isn't a controversial point.

Let's take a game with a lot of customizable character options but which still carries a strong sense of "typing." If you go by my schema for "roles," from that The Class Issue thread, then levels #2-3 would be awfully well-articulated for such a game. Just to keep people from running off to track down the reference, I'm talking about (a) a sense of the character's "story role" (leader, ingenue, staunch guy, sidekick, etc) and (b) a sense of the character's "societal role" in the game-world (ranger, prince, bandit chief, etc).

So here you are, and you choose your options such that these two kinds of roles are very, very clear to you for this character, especially relative to the setting in question - oh, and let's say that we're dealing with a canonical setting which carries a lot of literary/fictional weight, and emotional commitment on the part of the role-players. Playing in this setting is an homage, taken seriously.

In such a game, how can the System for character creation let you down - or more accurately, communicate Consequences X to you, regarding your character, but Consequences Y to your GM or anyone else in the group?

1. It can contain options that simply contradict or devalue elements in the source material. The "animal changing" spell thing seems like a candidate, hence the mutual desire to see it limited makes sense. Easily spotted and fixed. This is kind of trivial as long as people bring their commitments to the process and talk about them a little.

2. It can contain ranges of effects that give "power" to the character's #2 role, rather than to the character's #3 role. This is a big fucking deal, and it's why all the hassles about classes/no classes arise in the first place. You see, the #3 role is in-game: Aragorn's a ranger, hence he can track, run all day, shoot a bow, etc. But the #2 role is far more metagame-y - Aragorn is a King Born, or even better, a Conflicted King Born, and working that out through play is a very different issue from seeing Aragorn "do ranger stuff."

Here's my point: the railroading GM likes to confine player-characters to their #3 roles - their in-game definitions - and to keep the #2 roles very, very fixed and predictable, with any changes in them well-observed and managed by him, the GM, throughout. That way, it doesn't matter whether the Information Finder in Call of Cthulhu is a fussy librarian, a wise-ass reporter, or an alcoholic mystic. According to this sort of GM, the player's job is to put a hell of a lot of energy into the #3 stuff, and everyone knows that the Information Finder will Find the Information during that phase of play. The GM feels extremely propietary over the character in this regard.

But here you are, John, with your Druid ... who glory be, makes a decision that pulls her out of "nature stuff, sniff the air, sense bad orc things on the horizon," and straight into "investigate and rattle the cage stuff." Hey! Hey! says the GM. That's ... why, that's story role stuff! That's mine!

To you, the options chosen during character creation were raw meat for whatever changes and commitments you wanted to bring to the #2 level of the character's role - the story role. To the GM, the options chosen were only #3, in-game societal role, case closed, and the story role wasn't to be "affected" by those options in action.

Before I go on, does all this seem like blather and over-categorization, or am I making sense?

Best,
Ron

Thing is, I don't see this as a problem with the system.

Hi there,

Following up on my last post:

The class issue

Also see Item collecting, which brings up a related issue and contains many useful insights.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: That's what this anecdote reminds me of. I'll betcha a copy of Sex & Sorcery that your-all's tactics regarding this NPC were out of the GM's comfort zone of control of the upcoming events. I'll betcha he even had plans for that horse in the upcoming scene, or at the very least, anticipated that you'd ask questions of the horse that he wanted to keep secret for some future-planned revelation. The entire point was to keep "the GM screen" up in terms of information exchange - so he threw a big wall at you, purposefully spiced with the hard-to-port-ensign innuendo, in order to back you up and head you off and keep you bloody away from his control of what was going on.

John Kim wrote: Regarding the other problems, the short answer is yes. At least originally, I think the GM was nominally following the advice of the LotR book. He had a series of chapters, and each chapter has a primary goal and a secondary goal. XP is determined by how well we accomplish those goals. He seems to make a genuine effort not to force the PCs to do things. However, as we stray further from the chapter, he does get more uncomfortable

Hey Ron,

Before I go on, does all this seem like blather and over-categorization, or am I making sense?

It makes total sense to me. Of course I admit to being the choir, but it does a better job of explaining my abiding fondness for the time I was able to steal something at level #2 with my character Puntila than anything I've come up with myself. There's a not-unenjoyable tradition of Gamism to player/GM wrestling over level #2, I think. The pervasively denied aspect, however, is that such a victory is almost always achieved at level #1, rather than level #3.

Paul

To me this is an example of a break in the social contract. The Gm, maybe egged on by lurid jokes, came up with a situation that the players found inappropriate. It doesnt matter if he was doing it in an attempt to railroad the story line or if it was just an off the cuff attempt at creating a humorous situation, in either case it was offensive. That doesnt make the gm a bad gm he just followed an impulse down the wrong path at the wrong time with the wrong group.

I think Ron's description of the three types of sexual content levels typical in RPG's to be useful in hammering out where the group comfort level is.
In a game with a bunch of rowdy teenaged boys I dont think having your character in horse shape be the object of the stallions affection would be out of place.

I dont think that any system can really combat this sort of thing, it's a deeply ingrained part of human nature. Even in a narrative game like Trollbabe I could see a GM inserting a lewd unwanted element in a similar situation if he wanted. Unless you were roleplaying asexual lifeforms though then again jokes may come up.

So maybe you should discuss with the gm what level of sexual content you are comfortable with. For LOTR that is trying to emulate the books I would suggest that Denial is the best policy. I think there's a fine line between Function and Dysfunction and if you are going to go for functional you better spell out what the boundaries are i.e. no being raped.

Hi there,

I think everyone agrees that the Social Contract is what's at stake.

I was kind of hoping that people would follow up on my later post, which concerns how System can and does contribute to the issue.

To clarify as best I can, if character creation does not give the player explicit "rights" concerning the story-role of the character, but provides abilities and options that might influence and possibly change the story-role, then some clashes are going to occur over that role.

A certain sort of GM (Sim/Sit to be precise, expecting players to be Sim/Char) is going to want the character reliably to Do His Thing, using whatever variety of abilities the player chose for That Purposes of That Thing. To the GM, when the player does Another Thing with those abilities, that's plain breach of contract. Accusations of "taking over," "hogging the story," etc, often mask the GM's resentment in these situations.

A certain sort of player (Narr/Char to be precise) is going to want to address The Thing not in one way, but rather in a fashion to be determined through the moments of play specifically without pre-supposing or contracting to it. All the abilities are "ammunition" if you will for arriving at those moments of play and may have been chosen just for that purposes (anticipated but not pre-set synergy). When confronted with the above GM, the player is going to cry "railroad!" and point to the abilities' application as listed in the rules.

No system design will prevent Social Contract breakdown, but one system can be better designed to avoid certain pitfalls than another. From what I can tell, this particular system looks like it provides a couple of slippery chutes right into the pitfall that I'm talking about.

I suggest that all of the horse-horniness issue is a smoke screen masking this much more trenchant issue.

John, 'specially, is this making any sense? Is this the sort of System issue that seems as if it illustrates "system does matter"?

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: ..., if character creation does not give the player explicit "rights" concerning the story-role of the character, but provides abilities and options that might influence and possibly change the story-role, then some clashes are going to occur over that role.

Hi Jack,

Um, you might be goin' a little overboard with the Gamism thing. John's play was certainly strategic, but strategy can be a momentary or supportive part of N or S play just as moments of Premise+Theme can be part of G or S play - it's a matter of prioritizing. I'm still thinking my GNS distinctions in my above post are more consistent with what I've seen so far.

Best,
Ron

Mr Jack wrote: Hmm, how about 'when transforming into an animal the character can chose all aspects of the creatures form, including colouration, size, age and sex (within normal ranges for that animal)'? That actually might be kind of cool, since it would allow, for example, a player to transform into a juvenile and solicit sympathy from adult animals.

Caldis wrote: To me this is an example of a break in the social contract. The Gm, maybe egged on by lurid jokes, came up with a situation that the players found inappropriate. It doesnt matter if he was doing it in an attempt to railroad the story line or if it was just an off the cuff attempt at creating a humorous situation, in either case it was offensive. [...] I think Ron's description of the three types of sexual content levels typical in RPG's to be useful in hammering out where the group comfort level is. In a game with a bunch of rowdy teenaged boys I dont think having your character in horse shape be the object of the stallions affection would be out of place.

Hi John,

I agree with you - the "appropriateness"* of the sexual content is irrelevant once we really look at this instance of play. We're talking about power, roles, story, and control.

Best,
Ron

* I really hate this word; it's in quotes to indicate my distaste for its use as some kind of moral yardstick.

John Kim wrote: I think what made it particularly jarring was the off-the-cuff nature of the "in heat" ruling, as something on the spot which I had no say in (and which my character was not prepared for, despite being the shapeshifter).

John Kim wrote: I think what made it particularly jarring was the off-the-cuff nature of the "in heat" ruling, as something on the spot which I had no say in (and which my character was not prepared for, despite being the shapeshifter).

Ron wrote: I agree with you - the "appropriateness"* of the sexual content is irrelevant once we really look at this instance of play. We're talking about power, roles, story, and control.

Hi Emily,

I agree with you in full. The GM in question is apparently so concerned about story control that he will descend into sexism (an abusive form of control by definition) to keep it.

Do I assume correctly, that you agree that whether it's "appropriate" to mention, show, or think about large pink horse erections or stinky female horse secretions is a separate issue from the above?

I'm trying to separate out the issues of power/control, subset-sexuality, from issues of PG vs. R vs. X rating. As John points out, the latter issue seems as if it's not the key one here.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Do I assume correctly, that you agree that whether it's "appropriate" to mention, show, or think about large pink horse erections or stinky female horse secretions is a separate issue from the above?

Emily Care wrote:

Ron Edwards wrote: Do I assume correctly, that you agree that whether it's "appropriate" to mention, show, or think about large pink horse erections or stinky female horse secretions is a separate issue from the above?

I certainly don't assume to assert any universal appropriateness of discussion of horse's bodily fluids et al. I'd say that the control issues are related to the fact that the horse's woody was invoked in a manner that was locally inappropriate. What made it inappropriate was that it was used as a way to disempower the player.

What I meant by my comment about sexism, is that sex is just an avenue for control in sexist behaviour in the real world, just as it was in John's play example.

--Em

Some answers to Jack's questions:

Jack Spencer Jr wrote: What was the goal of this chapter? To catch and interrogate this NPC (perhaps taking his ring which sounds like a faux one ring, or possibly is the one ring and Frodo has the forgery? Did Smaug eat Bilbo and that's why this ring was found among Smaug's bones?), thus leading to the next goal? Or was it to follow the NPC to some place and situation where a resolution point will occur? If we knew this, then we could know a bit more about this situation and know why this particular move was blocked. If the GM was protecting his "story stuff" or if the goal before the PCs was to nab this guy and the GM was just putting up another obsticle.

Jack Spencer Jr wrote: First of, reading the description of what happened, the goal put before the players was to nab this NPC who apparently has a magic ring. This NPC has the ability to make himself and his horse disappear, so the problem before the players is how to nab this guy without him just disappearing on them again. This sounds to me like fairly gamist play and John responded in a gamist manner by looking at the abilities he has to work with, and came up with a possible solution. Maybe not a good or viable solution, but a solution nevertheless.

John, is this a accurate view here?

I feel the same as Emily.

While horse erections/fluids are not the specific issue, the problem does appear to go beyond just disempowering the player-character (or the player). After all, if the GM had just said that the NPC's horse was wearing an anti-magic charm that prevented the shapeshifting from working in that vicinity, the story control issue would be the same, but I doubt we'd be having this discussion about it.

The aggravating circumstance, as it were, is the use or threat of an indignity upon the player-character sufficient to be in and of itself a preemptive punishment against the player. The element of inappropriate (damn, there's that word again, but in this context I just mean mood-ruining, or inappropriate for the creative agenda) humor figures in there as well. The same objections would apply, without invoking explicit sexism, if for example the GM ruled that attempting to approach the NPCs horse in shape-shifted form would (due to the action of the hypothetical magic charm) cause the PC to turn into a hippopotamus wearing a pink tutu.

[Edit to say: I cross-posted this with the previous two posts. Consider this my proposed answer to the important first question in Sean's post. And John's post reveals a likely motive for the GM to have acted this way. The GM appears to want there to really be a chance for something to happen, but doesn't want to ever let it actually happen. There should be a name for this condition, since I suspect it's not uncommon; neither railroading nor illusionism quite describes it.]

- Walt

ADGBoss wrote: Sex and or Sexism has become a weapon of disenfranchisement at least in terms of player action. My question is: is it any worse to disempower through sexism then through just plain obstructionism? i.e. Well you cannot imitate his horse because I said so.

ADGBoss wrote: Of course the issue still comes back to GM. Mainly because we have not heard his side of the situation its hard to fully understand the thought processes under which the decision was made.

ADGBoss wrote: One last thing which is for me a question of clarity. When we say system with regards to this and similar situation, what is it we are talking about?
The Simple mechanics of the system?
The above plus examples of intended play?
All canon material as well? Supplemets, free downloads
All of the above plus commentary from the author(s) / designer(s)

John Kim wrote:

ADGBoss wrote: Sex and or Sexism has become a weapon of disenfranchisement at least in terms of player action. My question is: is it any worse to disempower through sexism then through just plain obstructionism? i.e. Well you cannot imitate his horse because I said so.

Well, in some sort of theoretical objective sense, maybe not. But I personally found it much more annoying than generic non-sexist obstructionism. And games are about personal taste, after all. Obviously, in a perfect world you wouldn't want obstructionism at all, and have egalitarianism for all races, sexes, and religions... oh, and free ice cream. But I think it's worth considering the question of sexism as a specific subset.

Hi folks,

I'm glad to see this thread taking on such a constructive direction. What I wanted to comment was that I concur with the idea that the "inappropriateness"(in Walt's meaning, in regards to LOTR) may have been along the lines of "player punishment" through humiliation of character.

What I find terribly telling is this:

Catching the rider before he delivered the ring would short-circuit the plot.

Ron Edwards wrote: I think everyone agrees that the Social Contract is what's at stake.

I was kind of hoping that people would follow up on my later post, which concerns how System can and does contribute to the issue.

Hi John,

You wrote,

should a game design state up front "the players choose their functions -- their `classes', if you will -- while the GM, as creator of the story, will select which story role the character will fulfill"? or its inverse?

or should we think about chargen designs where the player explicitely selects the "Information Finder" or other roles as a different layer in the character design phase?

Ron Edwards wrote:

should a game design state up front "the players choose their functions -- their `classes', if you will -- while the GM, as creator of the story, will select which story role the character will fulfill"? or its inverse?

You've described my primary consideration in character-creation options in all three of my games, each of which offers a different solution.
...
So my answer to you is not either/or, but merely "Yes," meaning that clarity of some relationship among my levels 1-4 is the key to avoiding the problem that John has run into. Well, not the big problem (de-protagonism, subset-sexism), but rather one route to its expression (story role vs. in-game role).

I have to say, this is quite an interesting and depthful thread. But I think you're all missing the most salient point of the original situation.

While the transformed character's mare was getting it on with the big black badguy stallion, the other players could have easily killed, trapped, or subdued it; thus turning a problem into a solution. =>

And yes, that was a tongue in cheek post, please don't flame me.