The tabletop RPG hobby is the worst

[Mr.Bookworm]

Like

literally

the worst

I know this is a bold theory, but after reading literally (literally) three different discussions concerning rape and how appropriate a subject it is to stick in your D&D game (in much worse terms, I'm simplifying) today, I am fully prepared to join whatever other hobby will have me. A hobby that involves literally eating shit would not be as shitty as the one I am stuck in.

Because it's not like it's just a few deeply awful people. I could deal with that.

It's that most of the responses take them seriously. They answer rape-related rules questions without a twinge of guilt in their black heart, citing that, yes, according page XX of the Book of Whatever the Fuck, her vagina does count as an unarmed strike. They discuss these ideas like they are logical and sane, instead of creepy and twisted and wrong.

And there is nary a single person asking them what the FUCK is wrong with them.

So, then, of course, when I came into the thread to tell some dude that he is in fact a bag of dicks, because he is being a bag of dicks on account of being what is, in my subjective experience at that moment, the worst person in the world, people pile into the thread to defend him, using arguments that could not be more poorly constructed if a master of debate spent his entire lifetime crafting them.

So, in conclusion, FUCK EVERYTHING.

---------- Post added at 11:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:57 PM ----------

What frustrates me is not that this is just a particularly shitty day or anything, it's that this is a recurring problem. Not just specifically rape and more generalized sexism, although those seem to be a recurring feature.

It's that the hobby consistently has a seemingly never-ending well of astonishing awfulness to draw from. I see shit like this, thinking about, almost every single week. You combine it with the general-issue awfulness and tribalism that invades the entire thing and I am coming to have a really hard time believing that a substantial number of the people involved in my hobby are not deeply awful people.

[Aerozord]

I have a general rule, no subject is taboo. I also have a rule that the game is about "fun" so I make it clear what is and is not ok with people. In games with dark tones this is often part of the premise. Like I am running a game of Eclipse Phase and I warned the players several times you will encounter horrible things.

So while I have no issue with it being in a game on principle just as I do not dismiss murder, torture, slavery, etc.

Personally I dislike playing in games that are too dark. I do not like being scared or unsettled, my mind is twisted enough without my entertainment being full of this crap. Though I do get the impression your issue is more about how these things are handled. Seeing how most mediums treat concepts like rape that does not surprise me at all and can definitely see why that would be rage inducing

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

well shit, there goes my aspirations for being a wealthy land baron in settlers of catan.

[Aldurin]

I stick with places like Giant in the Playground for that kind of stuff since they actually enforce standards with stuff like that. If you're having the terrible people problem, then you're probably at the wrong site and should leave them to fester and rot in their own quarantine pit.

[Ryong]

Cripes.

The only time the subject of rape was anywhere close to being a thing in our D&D group was when we decided to play an "evil" campaign on D&D 4e. This is going to take a while, but bear with me.

Ok, so, the whole point of that campaign is that the DM is terrible about railroading and we wanted to screw with him because all of his PCs are ridiculous combos. So our evil campaign has a vampire lord send us off to some town to get "it" which he won't describe, at all. He doesn't say if it's an object, a person, a monster or even information, no, he just says to get "it". After some ridiculous adventures where we end up starting up a revolution against the royalty by convincing a bunch of homeless people - most of them non-humans and we were all non-humans - that it was the only way things would get fixed, we eventually find an item that summons some ridiculously powerful creature, but while it's summoned we're basically powerless - this was the DM's solution to "how will an evil group stay together" because we're all clearly cartoon villains.
So we decide that clearly the best thing to do is summon the darn thing so it fights the vampire lord and they destroy eachother. Upon coming back to the castle, the vampire lord is now using everything he can to disguise himself as some rich noble and throwing a party and has an adventuring party ready to kill us. Our even more ridiculous plan is show up at the party, stop a play that's going on and make it about a vampire ( played by our orc wearing a cape and with carrots on his tusks ) that sends a party ( of a drow and a half-orc ) across the world to find "something" and that the thing he wants is basically a nuke.
The vampire lord responds by going "oh so he's that evil? you mean he'd do this?" and proceeds to rip off the clothes off some random girl and rape her, then kills her and throws her on the ground...And sends an adventuring party that has a GOOD PALADIN in it to kill us and they abide.

I have no fucking idea where are you going Bookie, but that's definitely not the best of places.

[Flarecobra]

Yeah, that is one subject that never comes up in the games the group I'm in. But let's be honest: Given the approximate timescale... it is something that can and probably does happen in the more lawless areas.

[tacticslion]

I would also suggest it's the place.

Paizo forums is usually pretty solid about this as well (like the Giant in the Playground, Aldurin mentioned earlier).

Rape does come up as a topic, but its either fully realized as the unbelievably awful thing it is, people shout down the person who doesn't, the moderators take care of it, and/or some combination of the above (almost always including the moderators in that case).

[phil_]

Originally Posted by Flarecobra

But let's be honest: Given the approximate timescale... it is something that can and probably does happen in the more lawless areas.

But that doesn't mean it's something that needs rules. NPCs can do whatever they want, but no player character should be raping people. It's like how there are no rules for shitting on someone's chest or eating vomit; it just shouldn't come up assuming the people around the table have any respect for each other.

This isn't aimed specifically at you, Flare. Your comment was just a good segue into what I've wanted to say from the beginning.

And what is wrong with your DM, Ryong, and why didn't anyone ventilate that vampire's chest while he was raping his guests? Or smack the DM while he embarrassed himself?

[Ryong]

We were all stuck in a "are you shitting me" look because he said the whole "ripped off her clothes raped her and then snapped her neck" thing in a single sentence.

Another completely different villain in another campaign he DM'd randomly started doing one-handed handstand push ups for the sake of showing off.

He doesn't think these through very well and then just drops the whole action as a single sentence that somehow can't be stopped.

[Aerozord]

personally I wouldn't automatically put that in the negative. I'd be more worried if he spent several minutes detailing what the NPC was doing