Rape, Murder, Pillage

[Haerthorne]

Because torturing peasants and burning villages is for most people low-level medieval fantasy (though not so much these days, sadly), while rape is something that they say has happened or will happen to 1 in 3 of the women in the room you're sitting in right now?

In short, the "immediacy factor".

That's my feeling actually about it. Lets be honest, Battlemaster is not played strictly as a medieval simulator. It's played by people from the modern era and that will come through at times. Murder and death are of course bad things, but we have a back drop of seriousness we can put it against. Rape... a lot of people still trivialise it to a great degree. Plus there is a considered to be different levels of murder too (killing combatants in war as opposed to killing in passion or killing civilians), with enough differentiation between them in all eras. I can say that my particular knight does not like killing civilians or collateral damage, but being a warrior is his profession and war is an unhappy business. The argument "is rape worse than death?" comes up a lot in the real world.

Final note: a lot of people insinuate that things were simpler, more absolute. They weren't. People have never been simple.

[Constantine]

rape is something that they say has happened or will happen to 1 in 3 of the women in the room you're sitting in right now

Jesus.. Do you live in Saudi Arabia or something?

Murder and death are of course bad things, but we have a back drop of seriousness we can put it against. Rape... a lot of people still trivialise it to a great degree.

That would be a valid point if it was true.
If anything, murder is much more trivialized on BM.
As it should be because its a game, btw.

Plus there is a considered to be different levels of murder too (killing combatants in war as opposed to killing in passion or killing civilians), with enough differentiation between them in all eras. I can say that my particular knight does not like killing civilians or collateral damage, but being a warrior is his profession and war is an unhappy business.

I'm perfectly fine with characters having opinions about stuff.
What I don't understand is OOC drama.

The argument "is rape worse than death?" comes up a lot in the real world.

Okay, that's not a real argument.

[Jens Namtrah]

Jesus.. Do you live in Saudi Arabia or something?That would be a valid point if it was true.

Wow. That's a pretty ignorant statement, for reasons I won't waste my time explaining.

That was a World-wide statistic, and extrapolates life-time expected. If you are American, it's only 1 in 6 attempted or completed, but I don't know how that extrapolates.

According to United States Department of Justice document Criminal Victimization in the United States, there were overall 191,670 victims of rape or sexual assault reported in 2005.[264] According to the National Violence Against Women Survey, 1 in 6 U.S. women and 1 in 33 U.S. men have experienced an attempted or completed rape

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#United_States

So, sorry - only 1 in 6 of your mothers, sisters, friends, women you see in the park or supermarket, etc have been raped or attacked. Wait, no! Those numbers are probably all wrong anyway - let's say only 1 in 10.

So next time you're at a pro baseball game in the Good Ole USA,  and there are 10,000 women in the stands - hardly more than 1,000 of them have been raped or attempted raped. Not even worth mentioning.

Sounds like fun. Let's go roleplay about it! 

EDIT: A more recent report, from the US Dept. of Justice, stating 16% " of women who experienced an attempted or completed rape", with 60% unreported.

http://www.statisticbrain.com/rape-statistics/

[Constantine]

Wow. That's a pretty ignorant statement, for reasons I won't waste my time explaining.

Thanks for actually wasting your time on that.

Sounds like fun. Let's go roleplay about it! 

What if I told you that exactly 0% of women in my family were rape victims, while approximately 1 in 4 family members died in wars?
Does it make me entitled to get miffed about people roleplaying wars and executions?
What's up with double standards?

[Kai]

It can't be more than the assault rate, so by that logic we should not roleplay violence at all. The overreaction to rape existing in a game is a bemusing product of glorifying both violence and women. Distasteful descriptions of anything including violence and rape can already be dealt with using normal rule mechanisms.

[Haerthorne]

Thanks for actually wasting your time on that.What if I told you that exactly 0% of women in my family were rape victims, while approximately 1 in 4 family members died in wars?
Does it make me entitled to get miffed about people roleplaying wars and executions?
What's up with double standards?

This is brought up a lot by people who don't get rape. When I said rape is trivialised I did not say "in battlemaster explicitly rape is trivialised". (For the record it is trivialised just take a good look at how rape victims are treated by people, the media, and the criminal justice system). What I am saying is that people have a reason to not want to order their troops to rape in their fictional game, in a topic which sprung from people saying "why are you guys opposed to rape in a game, it happened in medieval times".

You are making this about you. About how if we roleplay characters who don't like rape, who don't approve of their soldiers raping, who would rather they just kill people, avoid unnecessary casualties and be done with it, how that is us telling you not to roleplay it.

Same to you, Kai. Stop being hysterical.

This was turned into a topic because some people couldn't understand why others didn't agree with KRB and took it OOC. It isn't about how distasteful sexual assault is compared to killing and how we don't our sensitive feelings hurt by it.

[Constantine]

This is brought up a lot by people who don't get rape.

Really? Can you be a bit more assumptious and patronizing please, because I don't feel bad enough about myself yet. 

This was turned into a topic because some people couldn't understand why others didn't agree with KRB and took it OOC.

As I've already mentioned, I'm absolutely fine with people enforcing or opposing marginal behaviour in character.
If OOC drama was started by KRB enforcing crowd then I guess they are at fault in this particular instance.

[Kai]

Do what you like nobody cares.

It might be funny to order KRB but I can't muster sufficient !@#$s.

As usual the circle is character proxying for the player who justifies it by saying it's in character for that character.

[Chenier]

I stand by my statement that it's a cultural thing.

Armed robbery, beatings, killings, torture, etc. are all things that happen in real life. Some of which more frequently then rape. And none of them flare up much of an emotional response from players, if any. We are desensitized to violence. It's everywhere in our games. In our books. In our movies. In our news. In our schools. Everywhere. And it's considered normal.

Someone can make a lengthy RP about some sadistic torture session and, as a player, he probably won't even get any negative feedback at all. On the other hand, someone can make a not-so-descriptive RP about consensual sex and be scorned because "children play this game" and so on. If sexuality can't be addressed at all, how do you expect people to react to rape?

Western society is an ironic mix of hyper-sexualization and hyper-prudeness.

[Fleugs]

Can't we just accept that rape in real life is a no-no, rape in Battlemaster is okay?

This is a game, the Battlemaster universe is not real life and it's set in the middle ages, which by all means is a long stretch away from modern society.

I mean, I'm a real-life pacifist and strongly oppose any form of war or violence, yet I play a game that is entirely made up of war. I have no issues. Because I know I play a fantasy game. Much like I can play hundreds of first-person shooter and still be vehemently anti-weapons. Because I know it's not real. Much like I respect the sovereignty of nations in the real world, but when I play CKII or EU4, I'll happily subjugate the world. Because I know what is real and what isn't.

If you want to educate people on rape, a forum of a very tiny game might not be the perfect platform. I'm sure there are plenty of actual real-life organizations who would love to have you as a volunteer!

[jaune]

Someone can make a lengthy RP about some sadistic torture session and, as a player, he probably won't even get any negative feedback at all. On the other hand, someone can make a not-so-descriptive RP about consensual sex and be scorned because "children play this game" and so on. If sexuality can't be addressed at all, how do you expect people to react to rape?

Western society is an ironic mix of hyper-sexualization and hyper-prudeness.

I got several vulgar reports from RP's where i didnt even write very graphically about torture and killings and all those happened somewhere where other characters could not know about those... still got vulgar reports at Dwilight, i gave up and paused my char.

But back to this KRB, i have given up with this issue too. It seems to cause OOC frustrationa and bad wibes to people so i have stopped ot argue about it and use pillage and maraud... every time issue is brought up some people start to scream how nobles should not rape... It is soldiers who have been ordered to kill, rape and burn everything. Back when i was told about how my realm or army has done KRB i have said that it is not true and peasants are lying about the rape part, i was told by reports it was killing spree, not raping spree.

[Chenier]

I got several vulgar reports from RP's where i didnt even write very graphically about torture and killings and all those happened somewhere where other characters could not know about those... still got vulgar reports at Dwilight, i gave up and paused my char.

But back to this KRB, i have given up with this issue too. It seems to cause OOC frustrationa and bad wibes to people so i have stopped ot argue about it and use pillage and maraud... every time issue is brought up some people start to scream how nobles should not rape... It is soldiers who have been ordered to kill, rape and burn everything. Back when i was told about how my realm or army has done KRB i have said that it is not true and peasants are lying about the rape part, i was told by reports it was killing spree, not raping spree.

That would be an incredible misuse of the vulgarity button, if you ask me.

And I've never seen this. I've participated in various RPs of torture and ritual killings of people, including a leper colony, and never saw anyone object to it.

[Sacha]

Well, more KRB and more people rehashing the same arguments to declare how evil KRB is.

Some things will never change eh

[Constantine]

Reality check. Raping and killing innocents was deemed as an evil deed by most standards including those of medieval nobility.
Not that it wasn't practiced still, but suggesting that being accused of it shouldn't be something to besmirch a knight's honour is definitely wrong.

[Indirik]

On some islands, in most circumstances, most of my characters would agree. On the war islands, I couldn't care less.