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Yep if you want a sexually explicit TTRPG experience then be clear about it and play something like FAPP. Not get your friends to play it line the Magical Realm guy.
The Politics of Tabletop RPGs
- Thread starter mesonoxian
- Start date
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I think we can all safely agree that that shit ain't right.
It's mostly a question of whether you're willing to consider a person rehabilitated after some years have passed after a "that shit ain't right" moment. And, if so, what conditions must be met for that to happen.
- Location
- my house
I mean, I don't think he needs to be "rehabilitated" whatever that even means? I just watched the clip and nobody at the table seems uncomfortable with what happened, everyone seems to be having fun, and it's after a good 5 minutes of consensual buildup between the players at the dm.
Is it weird? Sure, but weird shit happens during DND games all the time
Edit: It also clearly wasn't a fetish thing, but the use of shock humor. Like, it's not the highest of comedy but "says some shit which is vulgar so everyone laughs" is a staple of comedy
Is it weird? Sure, but weird shit happens during DND games all the time
Edit: It also clearly wasn't a fetish thing, but the use of shock humor. Like, it's not the highest of comedy but "says some shit which is vulgar so everyone laughs" is a staple of comedy
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- Location
- Canada
Yeah I think the idea of rehabilitation in regards to celebrities or content creators who fuck up is kinda problematic. It implies a level of familiarity that borders on the parasocial. I am not saying you can't be upset by unethical behavior or choose not to endorse or support them because of it, but the idea they have to make it up to you personally and follow your standards of behavior is probably not a healthy outlook. None of these people are your friends or your loved ones or your business associates.
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- Georgia, US
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- He/Him
It absolutely does not imply familiarity. Rehabilitation is a societal concept, when we talk about rehabilitative justice we're not talking about finding a buddy who did something wrong and making them better. It refers to a broad process of taking people who have committed a wrongdoing and turning them into productive citizens.
In this case the actual event doesn't seem like that big of a deal and it's long enough ago that talks of 'rehabilitation' are unnecessary but framing the term in personal terms like this is not accurate.
DocSpooky
Humblest in the World
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- Australia
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The people in that video, including the player whose character was affected, all talk about how uncomfortable that made them. The player also noted that she had explicitly said she didn't want to do any sort of sex-related stuff in a discussion about lines.
"Rehabilitation for me and not for thee" is one of the more straightforward ways for a rehabilitative justice system to fail.
"I know this guy personally, he's remorseful and won't do it again" verses "that girl isn't performing the culturally appropriate apologetics, how can we ever trust that she's reformed?"
And, of course, parasocial relationships bait a lot of people into believing they know someone they really don't.
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- Georgia, US
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- He/Him
I'm going to be frank, I find this sudden obsession over parasociality to be more then a little irritating. I don't know who this guy is, I don't have any parasocial attachment. Harping about it is just a tiresome red herring.
You don't need to have a parasocial investment in a public figure to want them to behave the proper way. If someone is applying standards of rehabilitation inconsistently then that's on them, it has no bearing on this discussion.
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Was anybody in this thread like... suggesting that this dude had to do that? Like this just comes weirdly out of left field in the context of the conversation. What Simon put was perhaps worded a little weirdly but was just "can we assume that the person now 3 years later would regret the choice he made 3 years ago:", and like... asking that is necessary! If you're uncomfortable with what the dude did, logically you are going to need reassurance that he isn't going to do that sort of content again to get your support. The same for if you would be interested in joining any of his RPG projects!
Like, yes, on some level that does mean that the viewer is placing some level of trust into somebody that doesn't know they exist, which could be argued to be, to a degree, parasocial, but... that's just a thing you have to do with online content. Whether it's a comedy show, or a gaming stream, political stream,or a tabletop playthrough, you go in with the assumption that they will not be saying or doing things that make you actively uncomfortable (unless that in itself is part of the intent), and that is you placing some level of trust in them. That was a thing anybody who was viewing them content was always doing. Hell, this goes back to any form of entertainment- you always had a sort of trust that Alek Trebek was not going to randomly shout slurs on stage during Jeopardy, for instance. If you are not fully in control of the programming, you have to have a level of trust in the people doing the programming and that they're going to behave in a way you like, and have some trust that if they have not done so in the future, that they do so now. I would argue that not doing this is a far less healthy way of engaging in content consumption!
I'm not getting into the trainwreck that is the understanding of parasociality here- like, shaming somebody for this level of parasociality feels akin to shaming somebody for thinking an antagonist is going to turn good later on in a show because of the character's actions because that's "too parasocial". It's silly.
Anyway, this is something hard to assess without knowing whether this is a pattern of behavior for this dude, or if it was a one-off thing. If he has continued to do things like this, then that would be an issue. If not, then forgive me for being parasocial on main, but I think one could reasonably have the belief that this might have been an isolated case where he maybe meant to just make a dumb joke and badly fucked up, he had to face the conesquences for it, and has grown as a person, because that is actually a thing people do, rare as it can feel sometimes.
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- my house
I stopped watching a little after session end, is this later in the video or somewhere else?
DocSpooky
Humblest in the World
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- Australia
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- They/Them
Elspeth Eastman, the player in question, made a video about it on her Youtube channel. There's also a bunch of different interviews and articles from the other players explaining the situation. It's half-past midnight and I'm too tired to bother looking for the links right now.
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- Canada
I am not saying you can't judge him for what he did or let that judgement affect what your decision to support him and products he is in, I specifically said that is still a natural thing to do here. My issue is more the viewpoint of placing yourself in the room where the important conversations need to take place just because you enjoyed or consumed his content before.
There was a sort of similar situation a little while ago that brought me to these feelings, there was this 40k content creator who did a lot of popular fan music who was outed as a groomer and put out a long explanation/apology video. I watched the video and a lot of the comments just got under my skin, not because they were defending his actions but because they were not able to view the situation in a mature totality. Someone admitting to grooming is not the time and place for "why has the emperor forsaken us?" memes or jokes about chaos corruption. The whole thing made me realize how deeply unhealthy many peoples views of content creators are and how those attitudes directly negatively affect the way we deal with issues of abuse and inappropriate behavior.
Applying a sort of whore/Madonna complex to people you watch online, where they are either cool creative dudes who would totally be friends with you IRL or the lowest evil demonic grifter is not good an does not help the situation at all.
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Sure I don't disagree with any of that but... I'm not sure where you're disagreeing with anybody then? Like I don't see anybody really doing that earlier in the thread, all I can see in the previous few posts is just "that is pretty gross behavior" with Simon adding that it comes down to if people think he's improved. Was it the strict use of "rehabilitation" that bothered you? I admit it's kind of a weird word to use, it makes it sound like he's an actual criminal or was in a psych ward or something, but slightly clunky word usage aside I'm not sure what you were pushing back against and calling "parasocial" in that case?
- Location
- Georgia, US
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- He/Him
I wouldn't even say this, rehabilitation does have criminological connotations but it's not a purely legal term. Using it in a scenario where someone has a history of not strictly illegal but still socially unacceptable behavior isn't unreasonable.
That said, you're definitely right that even if it was a weird word to use it wouldn't matter because nothing he said indicated any significant degree of parasociality.
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- Location
- Canada
Yes I suppose it was that word I guess. The way that it was used and the tone of the conversation about deciding if he should get a rehabilitation just really rubbed me the wrong way. It conjured images of the community voting on his readmittance with voting shares dolled out based on how long you have been a fan of the show/how much effort/money you have committed to the fandom as opposed to the decisions and feelings of the people who were directly affected by what he did before and those he is working with now.
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- Georgia, US
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- He/Him
Ok, the issue is that he didn't say anything remotely like this.
All Simon said was that it was long enough ago that it would be worth considering whether the person in question has changed or not. That's it. Even if someone is uncomfortable with the post's use of "rehabilitation" the meaning was exceedingly clear. I understand that you've had bad experiences with fans reacting inappropriately to the revealing of misdeeds of a prominent person but that doesn't really justify this degree of extrapolation.
I'm not saying this to "call you out" or something equally trite, I just need to point out that there was no such tone or implication. It was a normal discussion filled with normal reactions to a prominent person's misdeeds.
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I mean, to not pile on but maybe put it a bit of a different way, I think you might have misinterpreted what he said a bit? You seem to have read this
As a question of whether he should be able to do the project, when he wasn't really meaning to talk about that, I think, I took it to be more referring to people choosing whether or not to consume the project themselves, but it could also apply to anybody he's currently working with, especially if they're women. Like, obviously he can do whatever he wants as long as he gets support and approval for it.
But your personal level of comfort with engaging with it on some level, is going to be judged by your take on him as a person. Like even aside from the "it being creepy" angle, the blogpost in the twitter thread includes a bit at the end discussing that part of the problem could have been that Adam is (or at least was) a major control freak who never listens/listened to anybody complaining about things in his games and they just learned to grin and bear the parts they didn't like. Which like, is probably going to result in a campaign that isn't necessarily super fun to watch even if nothing explicitly creepy happens!
So like, really it just comes down to, regarding if you want to engage in his content, if you think he's changed since 3 years ago, and what exactly it would take for you to be convinced of that change. Obviously a lot of us are more inclined to maybe let what happened go, the people on twitter are less inclined, it's kind of all dependent on your perspective on things and perhaps knowledge and context of the man himself, honestly.
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So Reddit is still being terrible so this is where I go to talk about TTRPG news now.
New Vampire 5E book Renegade Reveals New 'Vampire: The Masquerade' Sourcebook
It's about romance which is a weird topic for a sourcebook especially one with so few books.
I like how the cover is Male on Male kissing which is still considered taboo
How would you use Disciplines for romance?
I imagine you using Protan to spice up your sex life with pseudo beastailty. But what else?
New Vampire 5E book Renegade Reveals New 'Vampire: The Masquerade' Sourcebook
It's about romance which is a weird topic for a sourcebook especially one with so few books.
I like how the cover is Male on Male kissing which is still considered taboo
How would you use Disciplines for romance?
I imagine you using Protan to spice up your sex life with pseudo beastailty. But what else?
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Dream Logic
An offseason swallow
- Location
- In transit
All the physical ones are there. There's alot of abuse potential with domination but maybe you can work it in such a way it's ok?
Like 'hey actual mind control but you will still absolutely tell me if this crosses the line even though you will not be consciously aware of this order so as to not ruin the fantasy'?
Like 'hey actual mind control but you will still absolutely tell me if this crosses the line even though you will not be consciously aware of this order so as to not ruin the fantasy'?
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I mean the Hypno kink community is something that exists and has a strict code of ethics. Some people find being mind controlled really hot.
Through hypnosis can't make someone do something they don't want to do unlike dominate.
But I think talking about Dominate and how it relates to sex and romance to be something that just has so many consent issues in it.
With Presence someone is made super charming but you still have free will in how you interact with them. Dominate takes your free will away.
Speaking of this issue one of my Ventrue characters I made but never put into a game. Has a feeding restriction of "people with power over him" based on his weird hang ups and time he spent as a ghoul. He works to keep this very secret and the nature of his taste leads him to compensate with Ventrue swarmyness and really leaning in to Camrilla traditions.
Which leads to few Kindred wanting to associate with him for being a uptight traditionalist.
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- Somewhere
Since the older texts of the Domination effect for D&D allow a chance to break free if the order is truly "against the nature" of the target. So in theory the Dom just has to allow that to occur and avoid similar commands in the future now that they know. Again, in theory.
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- Te Ika-a-Māui
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This isn't D&D we're talking about, though, this is Vampire: the Masquerade.
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Yeah there was no was self preservation clause in Dominate. As in, in an early game, a Malkavian with the "single word/action" level of Dominate, was in a fight scene on the upper floor of a skyscraper and said "Did you know the word "autodefenstrate" means to throw yourself out of an upper story window? Also, Autodefenstrate."
Note that in first edition, humans didn't even get a Will save.
Note that in first edition, humans didn't even get a Will save.
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- Georgia, US
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It really is, VTM vampires are amongst other things a really blatant sexual predator metaphor. I'm... not sure that's a good place to introduce romance tropes.
Romantic love does play some of a role in canon given that blood-dolls* and blood-bonded vampires both love the source of their bond but that's not exactly a healthy form of romance. The whole point of the Kindred is that they're almost all exploitative monsters who are either in denial of it or fully embrace it, maybe there's so extenuating circumstance I'm missing but focusing on romance in a setting like this seems very poorly considered.
*When Kindred call their 'willing' victims a name this skeevy you know shit's going down lol
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Miath
Perpetual Depressant
- Location
- 1632 Revello Drive, Sunnydale California
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- She/Her
I never played my vampire as a predator (non-human blood sources are perfectly playable); because I, Player, am not a monster and will not suffer such bullshit foisted on to my paperdolls. People too readily forget that You, Player have control over what your doll is or is not regardless of what the book says.