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Thank you for that post, Leperflesh. It is no doubt going to be poorly paraphrased by me at some point in the future when the topic of succubi arises. Which I imagine it will, more often than I expect.
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Jul 27, 2014 02:55
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Quarex posted:Thank you for that post, Leperflesh. It is no doubt going to be poorly paraphrased by me at some point in the future when the topic of succubi arises. And I foresee many potential grognards.txt responses on message boards if you do it online. On that note, people keep citing Monsterhearts as a good example of "doing it right," but cursory surface glances still give off a whizzard vibe. For one, a sample blurb describes the game about playing "sexy monsters," and given its likely high school setting means that the PCs will be underage can cause many potential "nopenopenope"s from prospective players. So what's the scoop, why's it good? Libertad! fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Jul 27, 2014 |
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Jul 27, 2014 04:32
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Well, that would be down to the intensely self-aware style of it, the clear and frank discussion of how things are meant to work and how to handlestuff at the table and the very respectful treatment of basically everything.
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Jul 27, 2014 04:37
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Leperflesh posted: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. You are also from a sexually repressed culture where bare tits are equated with bare dicks as opposed to say ... bare tits to bare pecks and bare dicks to bare labia. You should visit one of the world's many cultures where you can go to the beach and see hundreds of people nonplussed by the presence of bare tits of all shapes, sizes, and ages because they have not been whipped by taboo into the same level of fetishizing an organ meant for feeding babies.
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Jul 27, 2014 04:41
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The idea, as I understand it, is to showcase the heroes' dedication to their purpose, rising above base instincts that the audience/reader can completely understand. An ideal sexual encounter, turned down because of heroic callings? Holy poo poo, these guys are heros. Fuckbeasts in D&D fall apart because DMs are way more prone to erotic succubus nipple derails than sealing your crew's ears with wax to avoid sirens' call.
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Jul 27, 2014 04:51
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I obviously don't hang around TG enough, what's a whizzard?
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Jul 27, 2014 04:56
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Libertad! posted:And I foresee many potential grognards.txt responses on message boards if you do it online. Because it's less about "having sex" and more about "being confused about sex" and "coming to understand sex" and "being hurt sexually through either miscommunication or malice" and "dealing with the social complexities of having sex/losing your virginity" and "coming to terms with sexuality" (a major theme, as the author is queer and trans). It's about viewing sex as dirty, or necessary, or powerful, or shameful, or intimate, or transactional, or all of these things at once. And it's also about vampires. (But the vampires are really just a metaphor for being weird and having scary secrets.)
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Jul 27, 2014 04:56
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Pope Guilty posted:I obviously don't hang around TG enough, what's a whizzard? http://gunshowcomic.com/471 mildly 
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Jul 27, 2014 04:57
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Hah! Right, of course.
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Jul 27, 2014 04:59
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Libertad! posted:And I foresee many potential grognards.txt responses on message boards if you do it online. In addition to what Gutter Owl is talking about, "sexy monsters" is literally just the best way to describe the genre of fiction that MH is trying to emulate. It's a supernatural romance/melodrama game that simultaneously dissects the genre in a fairly self aware way while still inviting players to enjoy it in spite of that. In that way it's not really so different from any of the legion pulp games that emulate various kinds of hammy genre fiction (Or better, actually, than the ones that just uncritically parrot the racism of Western movies or sexism of 1930s adventure serials or whatever). I'm sure if a group wanted to describe the actual sex scenes they could. But people run erotic Pathfinder and poo poo too -- most games of Monsterhearts are just going to fade to black at the appropriate time, because the mechanics only care about the emotional impact of sex, not what actually goes on. It is partially a game about sex and how the characters relate to it (poorly). But everyone should be aware of this going in, everyone knows what to expect. It's not really the same situation as sitting down to play "let's raid a dungeon" and ending up being an unwilling participant in the GM's elaborate sex fantasy.
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Jul 27, 2014 06:05
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Libertad! posted:And I foresee many potential grognards.txt responses on message boards if you do it online. It's not a whizzard thing because surely, surely anyone who interacts with Monsterhearts is aware enough to notice that sex Is A Thing in the game. Whether they are down with that or not is a personal opinion, but whizzard poo poo is when people get line breaking and veil tearing poo poo sprung at them without warning. Monsterhearts is also really good at tastefully dealing with that sort of thing, but that's a different line of discussion entirely.
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Jul 27, 2014 06:17
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I mean, the way I like to describe Monsterhearts is a game about being/fighting/kissing angsty, sexy teenage monsters, in the same way that the first two seasons of Buffy were about that same subject. Seriously, that's the baseline. It only sounds weird because of all the whizzards and grognards in the hobby, not because the subject matter is inherently perverted. e: to be fair, the existence of the Anita Blake books ain't helping either Parkreiner fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Jul 27, 2014 |
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Jul 27, 2014 06:18
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Parkreiner posted:e: to be fair, the existence of the vast majority of the Urban Fantasy genre ain't helping either This, aside from a small handful of authors and series.
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Jul 27, 2014 06:37
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Anita Blake and the like is kind of outside Monsterhearts' wheelhouse, being a game primarily focused on highschool melodrama -- that sort of baggage is more Urban Shadows' problem to deal with than anything.
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Jul 27, 2014 06:41
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Whole lot of people springing to the defense of Monsterhearts.
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Jul 27, 2014 06:52
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This probably steers it away from its roots a bit, but I like the idea of different kinds of demons trying to tempt people with specific things, and a succubus can probably be repurposed to tempt people with love, expanded to include Disney-style fairy tale romance. They aren't offering a single night of passion. They're offering a lifetime of companionship and understanding that no mortal "true love" can hope to match. It'd probably push D&D away from its pulp roots and more toward drama, but it could be interesting territory to explore. Though it could get depressing pretty quick.
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Jul 27, 2014 06:53
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PresidentBeard posted:Whole lot of people springing to the defense of Monsterhearts. And...?
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Jul 27, 2014 06:54
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PresidentBeard posted:Whole lot of people springing to the defense of Monsterhearts. It's a thing people tend to do for really good games.
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Jul 27, 2014 06:56
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It just seems like a bit much for a teen drama RPG. Though I do agree that accusations of whizzard stuff is baseless. edit: That isn't to say that people enthusiastically defending elf games is any less silly.
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Jul 27, 2014 06:58
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Monsterhearts has some of the best game design of any PBTA game in existence. Everything about it reinforces its themes and intended playstyle. It is easily one of the best-designed, tightest games that has been released in the past decade, if not the best. Its subject matter is pretty nontraditional as far as RPGs go, but it's easily graspable and easily understood by anyone, not just gaming nerds. It is a sensitive and thoughtful take on what could have been one of the industry's horror stories. So yeah, it's a teen drama RPG, but it's an incredibly good one. It's not for everyone, and I wouldn't want to play it with just any group, but it is basically a perfect storm of amazing work.
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Jul 27, 2014 07:02
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It helps that Avery McDaldno is a genuinely cool person, if you're down with radical gender-and-sexuality politics (which I am). I've had the privilege to have a chat with them over email over one of their newest games, Rookvale. (Elevator pitch: Grimdark genderqueer Pokemon. Or, as Avery put it, "a fantasy game that eschews regressive gender politics in favor of radical gender politics," to paraphrase.) Like, McDaldno will give you games for free if you can demonstrate in good faith that you're doing some kind of volunteer or charity work in exchange. gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Jul 27, 2014 |
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Jul 27, 2014 07:08
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PresidentBeard posted:It just seems like a bit much for a teen drama RPG. Though I do agree that accusations of whizzard stuff is baseless. Yeah, I dunno who could have predicted that happening in the Traditional Games forum.
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Jul 27, 2014 07:09
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demota posted:This probably steers it away from its roots a bit, but I like the idea of different kinds of demons trying to tempt people with specific things, and a succubus can probably be repurposed to tempt people with love, expanded to include Disney-style fairy tale romance. They aren't offering a single night of passion. They're offering a lifetime of companionship and understanding that no mortal "true love" can hope to match. That's what made the succubus in Torment so compelling, actually. She was still a temptress, she was just about "intellectual lusts" instead of bodily lusts. This was made worse by the fact she was actively trying to get out of the temptress business by running to Sigil and starting her brothel in the first place, only to realize that she was still acting the role of a succubus in a different fashion and that people were just as enslaved to the lusts she created there as they were to physical ones. She leaves with the protagonist for unexplained reasons, most likely originally locked away in her diary or sensate stone, both left unfinished in the game. She has the most interesting setup of the companions IMO, but she's also incomplete. She lacks the resolution and in game dialogue options of the others (with maybe the exception of Nordom, but its meant to be more comic relief companion anyway).
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Jul 27, 2014 07:49
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PresidentBeard posted:It just seems like a bit much for a teen drama RPG. Though I do agree that accusations of whizzard stuff is baseless. It's not a genre I really care for personally but it's as valid a genre as any other, and dismissing it specifically because it draws on a field that owes a lot to YA and romance is kind of a lousy thing to do.
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Jul 27, 2014 08:03
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PresidentBeard posted:It just seems like a bit much for a teen drama RPG. Though I do agree that accusations of whizzard stuff is baseless.
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Jul 27, 2014 13:05
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Gutter Owl posted:It helps that Avery McDaldno is a genuinely cool person, if you're down with radical gender-and-sexuality politics (which I am). I've had the privilege to have a chat with them over email over one of their newest games, Rookvale. (Elevator pitch: Grimdark genderqueer Pokemon. Or, as Avery put it, "a fantasy game that eschews regressive gender politics in favor of radical gender politics," to paraphrase.) I don't really get the "genderqueer" aspect of this game. There are apparently six genders in the setting, but barely any reference to/description of them in the text, and I'm not seeing the thematic connection to the rest of the game, which is Pokemon. Monsterhearts is cool as heck though.
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Jul 27, 2014 13:24
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Succubus chat: You're ignoring centuries worth of folk tales that predate Christianity, such as the Scandinavia Hulder. ''In some traditions, the hulder lures men into the forest to have sexual intercourse with her, rewarding those who satisfy her and often killing those who do not. The Norwegian hulder is a lot less bloodthirsty and may simply kidnap a man or lure him into the underworld.''
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Jul 27, 2014 13:50
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TheAnomaly posted:She leaves with the protagonist for unexplained reasons, most likely originally locked away in her diary or sensate stone, both left unfinished in the game. She has the most interesting setup of the companions IMO, but she's also incomplete. I didn't mind this; it actually works for the character that she has her mysteries, and you will never, ever, find them out.
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Jul 27, 2014 16:00
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Agronox posted:I didn't mind this; it actually works for the character that she has her mysteries, and you will never, ever, find them out. Reminds me of some school lectures on the topic of desire. Probably a coincidence, but it does work frustratingly well.
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Jul 27, 2014 16:32
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Saeku posted:I don't really get the "genderqueer" aspect of this game. There are apparently six genders in the setting, but barely any reference to/description of them in the text, and I'm not seeing the thematic connection to the rest of the game, which is Pokemon. The vagueness of the genders is by design. Players and GMs only a few vague hints to go off of--word connotations, a few notes on social status, nothing concrete--and have to devise for themselves what this means in terms of dress or presentation or affectation. This is because a) gender in the real world is constructed by osmosis of vague, unstated rules that change over time, but at the same time, b) McDaldno wanted to present the players with an opportunity to play with notions of constructivist gender on their own terms. (Note that none of the six genders are "male" or "female"--these terms are meaningless in the game world.) As for what this has to do with Pokemon...well, nothing, actually. Avery just hates the convention that medieval-ish fantasy always comes with regressive gender politics, and decided to be cute and disruptive. Rookvale was originally just one of their free experimental games, some random ideas stapled together into a nifty mishmash. But the game got a surprisingly enthusiastic response, so they repackaged it as a main line game.
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Jul 27, 2014 19:37
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ravenkult posted:Succubus chat: This is not quite correct, or rather it's a very limited perspective: Most Huldufólk are basically gnomes, dwarves, nature spirits and so on, with a fair minority being anything like temptresses. Even then, they are tempters first, not sexual ones; They can be encountered on midsummer at crossroads and they will show you earthly pleasures like food and wealth. The test is to see if you resist all of them, at which time you will gain all of them. (Naturally, no one can; one person legendarily failed after being presented with castles and lands and wealth when he was presented with a bit of nice blood sausage.) It isn't really until the Christian influences creep in that it becomes sexual temptation. The big example we have is the tale of Olaf Tryggvason, who is tempted to live with the elves by an elf princess, but he refuses because of his faith in God (She then stabs him because she is a servant of evil in this song). This is similar to how the only tale we have of Freyja being a promiscuous Norse goddess who slept with dwarves and was concubine to Odin was written by a monk in an attempt to demonstrate how Christian Olaf Tryggvason was; among other errors, that same tale insists that Odin was "A King in Asia of a land called Asialand", to emphasize how ungodly these people were. It's the one single example of any story involving Freyja having any sort of sex, too. So why the laser-like prominence given to these specific things over others? I'm sure you can guess. It's a very one-dimensional and cherry-picked way to present a fairly diverse set of myths and legends and it's used to defend dudes who like their penises hard more than anything. Rulebook Heavily fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Jul 27, 2014 |
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Jul 27, 2014 19:58
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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. So, did any dick-punching ensue?
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Jul 27, 2014 22:54
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Paolomania posted:You are also from a sexually repressed culture where bare tits are equated with bare dicks as opposed to say ... bare tits to bare pecks and bare dicks to bare labia. You should visit one of the world's many cultures where you can go to the beach and see hundreds of people nonplussed by the presence of bare tits of all shapes, sizes, and ages because they have not been whipped by taboo into the same level of fetishizing an organ meant for feeding babies. This is absolutely true, and certainly I want to see this change. It's more than just the repression, though: we simultaneously have the Puritannical disapproval of nudity so powerful that even breastfeeding women are asked to "cover up" in most social situations, and the relentless and completely pervasive use of sex in advertising, an enormous and fabulously profitable pornography industry, cultural norms that include lauding young men for promiscuity (while shaming young women for the same behavior), etc. etc. We Americans are not merely repressed sexually, we're terribly conflicted when it comes to bodies and sex. But while I want to see it change, I cannot simply deny its existence. If I invited my friends over for game night and broke out the nude models, it'd feel weird. Even if we're all progressive, forward-thinking people who aren't offended by nudity, it'd feel weird. I'm sure somewhere in my (excessive) collection of miniatures I've got more than one with bare breasts... but if my choice of tabletop army was "the sexy sex symbol faction" it'd be completely fair for my buddy to raise an eyebrow as to my choice. There's no question in my mind that the goal of the game designer and art director, when choosing to crowd the pages of my RPG sourcebooks with sexy pictures was titillation, as opposed to trying to move society towards more European attitudes about nudity. Our games can and should be progressive, and thought-provoking, and inclusive. But they also have to be games, and unless the issues of body taboos and gender identity are intended to be the central themes of a game, the game designers should do those things in ways that do not completely distract from the actual central themes of the game. E.g., we should have PC and NPC options for all genders and sexual identities; if there is nudity in the artwork, it should be equal-opportunity nudity; if sex is a thing we talk about in this game, it should not be exclusively heterosexual sex, and so on. But we don't need to try to challenge the American nude breast taboo in our elfgame in order to do those things, necessarily.
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Jul 27, 2014 23:48
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I'm in total agreement. Its a complex topic and context matters a whole lot. And certainly if we are talking about mainstream flagship RPG that is shooting for a wide demographic (which I don't think anyone would say that Monster Hearts is, but certainly seems the future direction of D&D) then leaving sex off the table is for the best. Pathfinder on the other hand, I don't see as specifically trying to stay kid-friendly. For instance, the RotRL campaign which was mentioned as having an antagonist with problematic sex politics also includes the investigation of a murderer complete with crime scene details such as "The poor man has been affixed to the wall by several hooks normally used to hang machinery. The body is mutilated, the face carved away and lower jaw missing entirely...". A campaign with such horror-themed modules is clearly not intended for a broad audience of all ages and sensibilities. That said, it would seem to be reasonable for such a broad system to keep its core PG and leave things like skin-flaying serial killers, Incubi and Succubi to sourcebooks marked for their sensitive content.
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Jul 28, 2014 10:42
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Hm. Not sure I agree, there. D&D is and always has been about killing things and taking their stuff, and the killing things part is often highly detailed. I started playing when I was around 10 years old. By 12, me and my friend were reveling in the most gruesome descriptions of eviscerating our foes we could invent. Pathfinder is, essentially, D&D. I suppose you could explicitly label a given campaign as not for kids or whatever, but game stores don't tend to have the top-shelf/no-kids section the way the corner store does for their porno mags. What I'm getting at is, I think D&D and Pathfinder are both kind of PG-13 "simulated violence" level by default. I actually don't think a certain level of discussion of sex and sexuality is out of bounds for teenaged kids, but yeah, actually incorporating nonconsensual sex, torture, sexual torture, etc. into the statblocks and flavor text of game supplements should be out of bounds for games and supplements deliberately marketed as being for the whole family including young teens.
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Jul 28, 2014 17:18
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That's... well, that's a whole problem with sex in gaming, isn't it? There doesn't seem to be absolutely no way to include it without making somebody angry, whether because its juvenile or creepy. It's -really hard- to find a positive sexual thing in these games, but plenty of negative ones (possibly because of the entire Judeo-Christian culture present in the west, like Leperflesh mentioned, where sex is seen as a bad thing). So, you want to make a god/goddess that encourages pleasurable sex? A culture that embraces that kind of thing? HOW do you handle it without being told that what you are doing is wrong? ... well, you can't, somebody somewhere is going to complain about something anyway. But, this doesn't mean there shouldn't be like an actual solid attempt to do it, right? And then there's all the cheesecake. Me? I like me some cheesecake. The problem arises when that is -all there is-. I've long since reached the point where I find pictures of women wearing armor with bare midriffs just makes me groan, no matter how good the picture is. I'm actually pretty fond of the iconic Pathfinder Paladin since, hey, fully armored female character! Boobplate's still dumb but I'll take my victories where I can get them.
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Jul 29, 2014 18:04
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Kerzoro posted:So, you want to make a god/goddess that encourages pleasurable sex? A culture that embraces that kind of thing? HOW do you handle it without being told that what you are doing is wrong?
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Jul 29, 2014 18:17
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http://www.vice.com/read/notallroleplayers-a-history-of-rapey-dungeon-mastersquote:Some men surveyed for the study helpfully suggested that "females' greater commitment to social reality" was to blame for their lack of representation. The report also highlights a deep anxiety and violence toward women in the men he surveyed and observed. "It is striking," Fine notes at one point, "that players consider inhibitions that prevent characters from engaging in fantasy rape to be a problem, but such is male informal interaction." He also writes, "While it is not inevitable that the games will express male sexual fears and fantasies, they are structured so that these expressions are legitimate." quote:According to a dissertation on gender in role-playing games from 2006, more than 55 percent of female gamers had been "made to feel uncomfortable, judged or harassed because of their gender," compared with 5.4 percent of male players. Similarly, 40 percent of women witnessed such an incident, as did 32 percent of men. Not all of these instances signify something as egregious as fictional rape, but the numbers are disappointing all the same. Now if they'd only take the full step and lay some blame on some publishers, too.
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Jul 29, 2014 21:21
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So I've been doing promo stuff for Breakfast Cult and I decided to put myself out for interviews/more APs etc. What's kind of getting me right now is that there aren't many places that actually do that. Maybe I am just looking in the wrong places, but it seems like the available options for someone doing indie work boil down to either hosting your own interviews or small G+ communities of people who probably already scoped out my game interviewing each other. That's weird!
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Sep 11, 2014 04:36
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I imagine most of that seems to go down in the podcast arena? I know there are at least some that do interviews, but finding ones that are suitable is another story. Maybe talking to some FATE blogs would be a start? Or a FATE podcast? I know there are some youtube outfits that do that sort of thing as well... ... they're out there, but I think the main issue is that finding them and approaching them. They're all over the place and the general devaluation of the term "RPG" makes them hard to find.
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