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Illvillainy posted:Deadnaming is slang (not sure how widespread the specific term is) for refering to a trans person's previous given name. It's considered rather lovely. I've always heard it as 'misnaming', and at best... yeah, it's awkward as hell. That bio would have looked a lot better if they'd mentioned her original given name once, in the first line. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that Strunk and White have a rule for this kind of construction yet, and if you think to ask ten different people with a personal stake in this for their advice, you're liable to get eleven answers. Distractedelf doesn't seem to mind, but that doesn't negate someone else finding it offensive. Best that can be done is to explain why it comes off that way, and hope that it sticks for the next they're writing on trans topics.
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Jul 26, 2014 04:36
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Arivia posted:Every time I look at Runelords I find something new and terrible.  Alien Rope Burn posted:Mind, with Golarion, succubi are the tricky supernatural seductresses, Incubi just straight-up force surprise sex on people. Also, you can guess which is depicted more art-wise, too... but then, they know their audience. "hey you wanna gently caress" And have pretty good success.
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Jul 26, 2014 08:16
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Zereth posted:Why do succubi always gotta be tricking people into loving? I'd think if they want to gently caress they could just go "hey" Because important people (PCs and NPCs the author/GM likes) are beep boop rational actors who never get side-tracked by normal human concerns like libido or lassitude. So you have to magic your gently caress games into existence. And then most "tricky succubus" powers end up being less tricky and more just mind rays. It's a hilarious cycle of stupid that shows up nearly every time someone writes seduction-type rules significantly distinct from the base resolution system they're being slotted into. Hyper-cynicism combo! 
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Jul 26, 2014 08:24
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Plague of Hats posted:Because important people (PCs and NPCs the author/GM likes) are beep boop rational actors who never get side-tracked by normal human concerns like libido or lassitude. So you have to magic your gently caress games into existence. And then most "tricky succubus" powers end up being less tricky and more just mind rays. It's a hilarious cycle of stupid that shows up nearly every time someone writes seduction-type rules significantly distinct from the base resolution system they're being slotted into. A problem you and yours were only too happy to solve with Abyssal Charms. 
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Jul 26, 2014 08:30
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Zereth posted:Why do succubi always gotta be tricking people into loving? I'd think if they want to gently caress they could just go "hey" Well, you may be so hard up for it that you'd gently caress a woman with horns, blood red eyes, giant bat wings and green skin just because she had a nice rack, but some of the rest of us have standards.
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Jul 26, 2014 09:32
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Jedit posted:but some of the rest of us have standards. I know we're talking about pretend elfgames where we fight demons with magic and all that, but what you've said is just too much for suspending disbelief. No goon has standards. Sheesh dude 
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Jul 26, 2014 09:40
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If a goon encountered a succubus IRL, they'd immediately start indignantly lecturing her about how they didn't want to be a part of a fuckmonster game, and what sort of creep did she think they were, until she got bored and went away.
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Jul 26, 2014 09:42
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Nah, they'd post a thread in E/N asking for advice.
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Jul 26, 2014 09:46
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GBS 1.4 - Free Carpet Samples Edition › E/N Bullshit › This girl is literally draining my life force, what do I do? The Crackhead Clubhouse › Magic Fuckmonster Megathread
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Jul 26, 2014 10:38
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ASK me about my Pneumatic Foocubus.
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Jul 26, 2014 11:01
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Mind, with Golarion, succubi are the tricky supernatural seductresses, Incubi just straight-up force surprise sex on people. Also, you can guess which is depicted more art-wise, too... but then, they know their audience. I guess the other issue is that, properly played, they are kind of an unfun monster. Like "hey I am gonna send a sniper assassin against the players" where the first indicator that someone is after them is when one of their head explodes from a shot 500 yards away it is kind of a drag narratively to be like "ok the hottie you picked up at the tavern and you start to go at it, fare to black except in your case the black is the black of eternity because you just lost all your levels." It seems tough to manage.
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Jul 26, 2014 16:43
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Auuugh yeah love lovely monsters that are also convenient excuses for more embarrassing cheescake art in elfgames
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Jul 26, 2014 16:56
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Jedit posted:Well, you may be so hard up for it that you'd gently caress a woman with horns, blood red eyes, giant bat wings and green skin just because she had a nice rack, but some of the rest of us have standards. Those are my standards.
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Jul 26, 2014 17:02
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Wilde Jagd posted:One of their APs (Shattered Star?) features a dungeon crawl in a sex dungeon ruled by lesbian succubi. In Wrath of the Righteous, the very same AP with Anevia, has long descriptions about the sexual exploits of a city's lesbian succubus ruler. In one of their bestiaries, there's an illustration of a statue to two succubi kissing to emphasize how they serve as muses for artists. Hey man, Demons Revisited offers a mature, varied and in-depth look at the nature of succubi and their role in your campaign.  
LightWarden fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 17:40
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I think I can recall one appearance of a succubus in roleplaying that was vaguely interesting, and that was the one in Fires of Dis, which is focused more on separating her sucker from her than on the actual sucking process. Oh, and there's the one in Torment, but she's based around playing against type, I think.
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Jul 26, 2014 18:13
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Zereth posted:With what? Actually, those two prestige classes (Dominant and Submissive) were not designed by Paizo, but by Green Ronin in 2002. Plot & Poison was a drow sourcebook with fluff and game mechanics, and two of their prestige classes involved the incorporation of S&M sex. The Dominant used mind control and pain to inflict on enemies, the Submissive were melee fighters dedicated to protecting their masters. The prestige classes were open game content, so Paizo used them. I don't know if that makes it better or worse. Going back to succubi, I think the problem with it is that D&D and all its retroclones are primarily combat-driven games about treasure hunters and explorers killing bad guys and spelunking in dungeons. The incorporation of sex and seduction mechanics doesn't work well when the rules framework isn't built around it, and a lot of DMs made the terrible mistake of assuming the PCs were all horndogs who'd totally shag a beautiful woman they just met in the middle of a ruin dedicated to an evil god. I recall hearing in various "gaming horror story" threads of DMs who just loved springing hot women sex monsters on the PCs to punish them for having sex. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 18:19
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I want to do a whole FATAL & Friends thing about succubi and erinyes because there's a ton of ridiculous poo poo (a surprising amount of which is written by Paizo Creative Director James Jacobs). Part of it is Planescape's fault.
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Jul 26, 2014 18:21
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I remember playing through the Gardmore Abbey with my group and we encountered sirens that gave us a riddle. We beat that and they invited us to stay the night with them. Two of the characters had no problem at the chance to bang them some magic poontang while another played music with a siren. When I voiced my objection to spending the night with these creatures and that we should press on I was then attacked by them and utterly demolished. Anyone who 'spent the night' with them were fully healed and had all of their surges back. I on the other hand was left at 1 hp and lost 3. The lesson here is apparently stick your dick in everything and you'll be fine.
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Jul 26, 2014 18:40
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Rand Brittain posted:Oh, and there's the one in Torment, but she's based around playing against type, I think. You have it correct. She's good-aligned in the game, and her personal torment is that she's (willingly) playing against type.
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Jul 26, 2014 19:00
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Excelsiortothemax posted:The lesson here is apparently stick your dick in everything and you'll be fine. Hence the succubus!
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Jul 26, 2014 19:10
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Excelsiortothemax posted:I remember playing through the Gardmore Abbey with my group and we encountered sirens that gave us a riddle. We beat that and they invited us to stay the night with them. Two of the characters had no problem at the chance to bang them some magic poontang while another played music with a siren. When I voiced my objection to spending the night with these creatures and that we should press on I was then attacked by them and utterly demolished. So, was this actually a part of the module or something your DM added into the adventure? Because at this point I find both options equally believable.
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Jul 26, 2014 19:20
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Sounds largely based on the DM. There's a set of nymphs or something in a forest glade, but they're just interested in hearing any secrets the characters have about themselves in exchange for secrets about the surrounding abbey. The grove is a safe place for players to rest up, but that's about it.
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Jul 26, 2014 19:31
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Really? I could have sworn it was in the book as I asked to read it. I'm over there tomorrow so I'll take a look. If it's not I'm going to punch him in the dick.
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Jul 26, 2014 19:42
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It's a pretty standard genre convention that strange, totally hot fantasy ladies wanting to do you ends badly. The succubus is like a litmus test to determine which players know better. The only place this doesn't happen is homebrew D&D, with teenage boys (and forty year old teenage boys) are calling the shots.
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Jul 26, 2014 20:46
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Jedit posted:Well, you may be so hard up for it that you'd gently caress a woman with horns, blood red eyes, giant bat wings and green skin just because she had a nice rack, but some of the rest of us have standards. Please don't kinkshame.
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Jul 26, 2014 21:43
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Excelsiortothemax posted:Really? I could have sworn it was in the book as I asked to read it. I'm over there tomorrow so I'll take a look. If it's not I'm going to punch him in the dick. Even if it's in there, you should punch him in the dick anyway for running that scene as written.
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Jul 26, 2014 21:54
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yeah we're looking at a bit of a whizzard situation here.
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Jul 26, 2014 22:07
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Why does there even need to be an evil sexmonster in D&D? If you don't count any of the skeevy stuff from third party sourcebooks, the succubus/incubus is the only instance in D&D where intimacy ever comes up mechanically and even then it's "Welp, you lose a level." The only thing that leads to is players being constantly paranoid about being intimate with NPCs, because there's always the off chance that it's a life-destroying demon. Also, because succubi are more prominently presented in the game than incubi, it easily leads into the old "all women are potentially seductive she-devils" cliche, which is just tired and sexist. D&D is just not generally suited to gameplay that explores sex and/or sexuality on a meaningful manner, and the fact that the game features a sexmonster that sucks the life out of you further discourages any intimacy in the game. Also, why would a monster that is all about enticing people to the dark side with the power of their sexuality actually drain the life out of their victims in intimate moment? Wouldn't they want to keep their victims alive so as to be able to tempt them further?
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Jul 26, 2014 22:49
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You'd think but succubi are from back in Chainmail where every creature was just stats for a wargame. They've been copy and pasting the stats since then. It's the same reason why most old D&D monsters have really weird "gamist" abilities.
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Jul 26, 2014 23:39
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And is also why elves are immune to Ghouls, a specific chainmail unit.
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Jul 26, 2014 23:41
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Ratpick posted:Why does there even need to be an evil sexmonster in D&D? If you don't count any of the skeevy stuff from third party sourcebooks, the succubus/incubus is the only instance in D&D where intimacy ever comes up mechanically and even then it's "Welp, you lose a level." The only thing that leads to is players being constantly paranoid about being intimate with NPCs, because there's always the off chance that it's a life-destroying demon. Also, because succubi are more prominently presented in the game than incubi, it easily leads into the old "all women are potentially seductive she-devils" cliche, which is just tired and sexist. When a notsex demon kills a player and sends their soul to hell, why do we just have them roll up a new character instead of roleplaying the eternity of torment they're suffering? The answer is that we can have recognizable tropes without needing to  them all to their logical conclusions in game time.I agree with you that incubi and succubi should be treated equally except for physical gender, and even be the same entry in the way that, for example, you wouldn't expect male and female bandits to be differentiated; and that maybe there are further refinements that could be made within any given system! I think that until the representation of sexdemons in the MM or in published adventures gets excessive (aren't we mostly just talking about one adventure path here, still?) that most games are relatively safe from excessive sexdemonry, unless you play with a whizzard in which case that's a problem you should probably address in any case. JerryLee fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 23:50
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I don't understand why whizzards keep showing up at physical tables. With the existence of online erotic role-play communities who want and expect those kinds of games, you'd assume that that would be their refuge of choice instead of the awkwardness of trying and failing to role-play out a lesbian sex scene with their long-time gaming buddies in the flesh. The former option gets like-minded souls together to get their freak on in a semi-anonymous environment, the latter leads to broken friendships and the players never looking at you the same way again.
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Jul 27, 2014 00:20
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It's a bit like finding a gaming group RL. You need to know where or how to look, and from there find an environment that works for you. There's probably a bit in there that wants (whatever) to be considered acceptable by the group too, like introducing your friends to this nerd game you picked up. A bit. I think the real whizzards are the ones whose grasp of social interaction is so tenuous that the above doesn't even occur to them, and instead just take their group on a whirlwind trip through an adolescent Neverland.
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Jul 27, 2014 01:16
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Bieeardo posted:I think the real whizzards are the ones whose grasp of social interaction is so tenuous that the above doesn't even occur to them, and instead just take their group on a whirlwind trip through an adolescent Neverland. The real whizzards are the ones that even cybersex chatrooms want nothing to do with so instead they have to lure people in with the promise of playing D&D in order to set their grand lesbian succubus magnum opus in motion.
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Jul 27, 2014 01:29
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So, if one was wanting to interview industry peeps about the design history of the magnificent kobold, who would people recommend?
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Jul 27, 2014 01:40
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JerryLee posted:When a notsex demon kills a player and sends their soul to hell, why do we just have them roll up a new character instead of roleplaying the eternity of torment they're suffering? Did it hurt to miss the point so goddamn hard?
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Jul 27, 2014 01:49
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I think I posted about the succubus thing before, although maybe not in this thread. They originate in a repressive catholic society where the succubus is a boogie-monster used by the church to try to dissuade good catholic men from the damnation found in extramarital sex. Simultaneously, it literally demonizes women who express sexuality or seek sex, explicitly comparing them to irredeemable, soulless forces of evil. Because of course, tempting a man into sin is the worst sort of sin (and it's no accident that this was Eve's sin). D&D has since its very beginning incorporated mythological entities from all manner of world religions, but especially from the Judeo-Christian religion. We have clerics as a basic character class from the very beginning, for example: holy priests with a prohibition against spilling blood. We have literal angels and literal devils, cherubs and saints... basically thumb through Dante's Inferno and everything you find has been copied into D&D at some point. It makes sense because those are recognizable touchstones of Western culture. You can tell the party they have encountered an angelic representative of a god, and they will not likely be really confused about what an angel might be. The succubus came along with the rest. But thumb through an old-school monster manual, and you will see a decidedly 1970's prediliction towards illustrations of fairies and unicorns, rainbows, goblins, trolls... and anything with bare breasts, including sphinxes, nymphs, dryads, niads, mermaids, harpies, and succubi. They're in D&D because they're part of Catholic mythology and because they are sexy. The former makes them somewhat understandable as inclusions in the monster manual. At least, as long as D&D is going to continue to use christian mythology the way it does, with angels and demons and devils and literal planes of Hell and Heaven, with concepts of Good and Evil that are tangible and defined by the universe in black and white terms, and so on. There's a really good conversation to be had, by the way, about whether any of this stuff really "fits" into a fantasy game. Tolkien certainly relies on christian metaphor, but he avoided going beyond the metaphorical (Gandalf's betrayal by a Judas figure, fall, and subsequent resurrection, for example). The Maiar might be thought of as angelic, but they're never described as literal angels. The Balrog might be demonic, but it's never stated as being literally a tool of Satan. I tend to think that you could run a D&D game explicitly in a magical-Catholic universe (see: Deryni) and that could be interesting, but D&D's default everything-and-the-kitchen-sink setting annoys me sometimes: when content borrowed from wildly different real-world cultures or origins wind up mushed together I think much of the meaning and significance of their origins is lost. There's also the very reasonable points already made, that sex-tempting monsters both prime players to avoid all sex (similarly to how if the player's NPC allies betray them, they tend to become averse to trusting any NPCs, but that's a topic for another rant). To me, though, the more basic problem was just the original bare-tits obsession. I mean I like bare tits, I'm a straight white guy, but I don't enjoy bare dicks and wouldn't want my game to be full of bare dick pictures. I can easily see how a constant barrage of bare tits (etc.) would make people not sexually interested in women uncomfortable. Or even those who are, for that matter, my enjoyment of sex and porn being something I would not want to share with anyone other than maybe my wife. Elfgames are not where I want to openly explore eroticism, and I think that's the default for most roleplaying gamers. So the succubus is doubly-inappropriate, not only when it's obviously being used as an excuse for juvenile titillation, but also because it's very existence originates from a religion/culture obsessed with controlling people's sex lives. It's not right for elfgames, it's not right for games that want to move us past that repression, it's not right for games that want to be inclusive of groups other than heterosexual males, and ultimately I feel it doesn't fit in with a polytheistic setting. Certainly succubi make no sense being tools of any god that isn't excessively interested in sexual repression and control. I could see a succubus or analog thereof conceivably working in some other game, one with a more cohesive theology that cleaves more closely to the Judeo/Christian tradition... and also is oriented much more towards exploring adult topics surrounding relationships, betrayal, theological morality, repression vs. freedom, etc., all of which the writers have taken great care to account for differences in gender and sexual identity and background, and definitely not intended for kids. I wouldn't want to play that game, but maybe someone would. I'd hope it wouldn't involve much (or any) turn-based tactical combat simulation, as that'd be an obvious distraction (especially if it glossed over the obvious ethical implications of killing, the way most of our elfgames do).
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Jul 27, 2014 01:57
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It seems like the non-whizzard way to use a succubus (or at least the salient features that make her a succubus) would be as a sociopolitical plot element, in the sense that there's a foocubus who's corrupted the ruler of the kingdom or whatever, but doesn't try to actually kill the players by snu-snu. "Priming the players to avoid all sex" is irrelevant if the PC's sex lives aren't a topic of discussion anyway. Alternatively, it could become a more general sort of influence/mind control demon. I don't own the Pathfinder MM and don't have my old 3.0 ones handy, so I have no real recollection of how far short the typical succubus falls of this more reasonable proposal. Based on the conversations in this thread my guess is pretty far, but on the other hand I sometimes have trouble picking actual realistic assessments apart from some goons' eagerness to prove that they are not only not-whizzards, but the shining incorruptible exemplars of anti-whizzardry.
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Jul 27, 2014 02:17
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JerryLee posted:It seems like the non-whizzard way to use a succubus (or at least the salient features that make her a succubus) would be as a sociopolitical plot element, in the sense that there's a foocubus who's corrupted the ruler of the kingdom or whatever, but doesn't try to actually kill the players by snu-snu. "Priming the players to avoid all sex" is irrelevant if the PC's sex lives aren't a topic of discussion anyway. Alternatively, it could become a more general sort of influence/mind control demon. Yeah, the thing about this approach is, well, this could be done with any sort of demon, or evil wizard or whatever for that matter. I'm not saying it's a bad approach, but the defining trait that makes a succubus a succubus is boning. That's sort of their whole deal (insofar as myth/legend goes, not necessarily in terms of pure elfgame mechanics, though succubi in RPGs almost always have some kind of charm and mind-whammy stuff and having sex with them is a bad idea).
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Jul 27, 2014 02:28
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Kai Tave posted:Yeah, the thing about this approach is, well, this could be done with any sort of demon, or evil wizard or whatever for that matter. I'm not saying it's a bad approach, but the defining trait that makes a succubus a succubus is boning. That's sort of their whole deal (insofar as myth/legend goes, not necessarily in terms of pure elfgame mechanics, though succubi in RPGs almost always have some kind of charm and mind-whammy stuff and having sex with them is a bad idea). Yeah, I don't disagree with you there--my point is more 'only bad DMs [or ill-written adventure paths, as the case may be] think that player-succubi boning must ensue simply because they are part of hell's portfolio'--none of which is to say that the core mechanics or fluff surrounding succubi are as good as they need to be.
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Jul 27, 2014 02:38
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