Author Topic: Can graphic violence or sex in Role Plays become unacceptable in BM?  (Read 10333 times)

Qureshima1

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Ok. Thanks for all the responses. I think we covered a lot of opinions and established the facts about current controls. This is my final statement and I leave it up to Game moderators if they want to pick up this issue or not. Since it hasn't been a widespread problem, it may not be worth dealing with.

1. I raised this because I've been playing BM for many years and I haven't been disturbed by previous posts, so I am no snowflake. This one did disturb me, I felt it was straying into unnecessary explicit brutality and maybe rape fantasy. I appreciate opinion is divided on that.

2. Currently the only restrictions are vulgar language and not Roleplaying other peoples characters. Neither of those restrictions apply here.

3. Here is a possible way to deal with it if you think its a problem. You could have a mechanism like the vulgarity rule where other players decided if a post contained excessive violence or sexual content.

4. Or continue to go on as we are. We have managed without any control so far. I guess that if any post was so excessive as to cause a massive amount of criticism then some action would be taken anyway.

And in the immortal words of Forest Gump "thats all I have to say about that".


Blint

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Here is a possible way to deal with it if you think its a problem. You could have a mechanism like the vulgarity rule where other players decided if a post contained excessive violence or sexual content.

That seems like duplicating the Vulgarity mechanic..

Also in regards to your opinion about this being "excessively disturbing" while I respect your opinion. I wholeheartedly disagree. This was no where near explicit or graphic in terms of content. I wouldn't even classify this as anything close to Rape fantasy..

Not saying you're a snowflake, but I do feel that you might be being a bit oversensitive here...

I am of the opinion (and I think someone echoed it above..) that we are way to sensitive these days. The media and all this "Social Justice" has conditioned people to be so cautious and careful of what they say and do. Sometimes, and this is a very minor instance of this, I just want to scream, "Grow the F up and recognize that its not for you, and move on."

I don't mean for this to be a post where I am attacking anyone, I just get rather frustrated when I perceive people to be complaining about something being "too XYZ" for their taste so we should change the rules to make that never happen again. That's not how life works. The world isn't a cuddly safe space.

All in all, I think we have hammered this topic pretty much to oblivion.. It isn't a widespread issue, so I don't think there is any need for action to be taken.

I do also appreciate that we were able to have a civil and productive conversation about something that has the potential to be so polarizing.

END RANT.
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MTYL

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Obscene or not, the first thing I've noticed about that RP is that it's very well written. Hell, I'm not sure if I'm this eloquent in my native language as this guy is in English.

And regarding graphic violence and sex - in my humble opinion there should be a system that would allow you to mark your RPs as such and they wouldn't be visible in news section unless you click at them (something like spoiler mechanic on forums). Shouldn't be too hard to implement and would allow both innocent children and people who enjoy going to the darker place enjoy the game.

For me personally this dark medieval realism that blossoms in some RPs is one of the best things in battlemaster. I never seen any censorship in BM before and I would be very disappointed  to see it. There is rare quality to ruthlessness in storytelling.

And that particular RP was very "safe" in my opinion. It wasn't something his character commited or any other PC, it was something observed. Of course OOC it was all born in this player's mind, but IC there was noone to put responsibility on. And even as such it wasn't that graphic.

If that's where we draw the line as a community, then very big part of this community will find itself on the wrong side of that line.
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Gabanus family

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If that's where we draw the line as a community, then very big part of this community will find itself on the wrong side of that line.

That's for sure. Part of why the RP was strong is also because it was a description of stuff actually happening in BM. I also love how certain chars actually refuse to do brutal TO's and some others who object when they have to do friendly TO's (actually only know one, but it's the idea that counts). But like mentioned earlier by someone else, it's sometimes easy to forget the brutalities our chars actually perform. I mean in essense most of our chars don't even view peasants as humans (just because they were born differently), which is of course the opposite of current culture. So in that way we're way off from our current world from the basics onwards.

Speaking of getting yourself on the wrong side of the line, I think it's your turn in Jarra's ever darker growing story...
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Logar

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During reading the OP's first post, I was expecting something of a pornographic raping nature, but I found the RP not of the sort. The RP was fine in my oppinion.

My line is: anything that borders into pornographic detail = unsuitable. Blood and gore = acceptable.

There are worse horror films out there, Im sure many 12 year olds have sat down at watched.


Good to see this thread being mature and civilised.
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MTYL

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There are worse horror films out there, Im sure many 12 year olds have sat down at watched.

Good to see this thread being mature and civilised.

Couldn't agree more.

Speaking of getting yourself on the wrong side of the line, I think it's your turn in Jarra's ever darker growing story...

I've been quite busy with RL and then when I finally got some time for quality RPs Jarra got wounded and stays wounded for over a week now. Just my luck I guess.
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Chenier

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Don't get me wrong Chenier, I personally find nothing wrong with this RP and I've probably written worse with either Aeneas or Goriad II, but it does not hurt to be empathetic to those who do take offense, not that you haven't been. I'm not saying we should change things because of it, but still.

And if they can be ignored and otherwise not read, I believe that that is sufficient to counter a RP you don't quite like.

Some people can have legitimate reasons to be more sensible to certain things, and this is understandable. But the growing trend towards excessive sanitization of anything that could ever be construed by anyone as perhaps offensive is nothing short of cancerous. There's a world between intentionally antagonizing people and not saying anything at all out of fear someone might disapprove. And in the end, people can be conditioned to have traumatic responses to just about anything, should we stop talking about dogs because one of our messages might be read by someone who've been at Abu Ghraib? That's just to give one example of how an object nearly-universally considered as benign could still trigger a wholly legitimate traumatic response in some. Furthermore, from what I've read, it is actually harmful to overly protect post-trauma victims from "triggering" material, the healthy thing for these people is not avoidance, but coping, moving on.

The most acceptable compromise I could think of is giving players an option to tick a box "this message may contain delicate subject matter", and then offering every player to tick a box on their player page "hide all messages flagged as containing potentially delicate matter". Perhaps players would also be able to flag other messages as such. But: no sanctions! The premise for such a system needs to be an understanding that everyone's limits are different and that this isn't meant as a tool of censorship and that there is no desire to reprimand those that use it.

Still, I loathe the implications of such a mechanic. If you start allowing semi-censorship by flagging others, you are certain to increase the reach of these messages, because they will inevitably end up on the forum for discussion and debate. You are also implying "go ahead and write all the nasties you want, you can just tick them off anyways", which would likely increase their prevalence IG. The likely result is simply overemphasizing that which was otherwise marginal.

I'm all for reasonable accommodation of special needs, but the emphasis is on reasonable, and that requires respect both ways. When considering the harm words can do, one must also consider the harm censorship can do.
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Nosferatus

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My line is: anything that borders into pornographic detail = unsuitable. Blood and gore = acceptable.

Can you perhaps explain your opinion here?
I don't understand why violence would be fine and sex unsuitable or unacceptable.

Personally I find any kind of porn writing ridiculous, the goal of porn is to cause arousal not necessarily tell a story.
In that way you could call it unsuitable as the goal would be to tell a story or add color to events that happen in game, not just to arouse.
I'd call a porn RP probably just a bad RP if it lacks this kind of value.
But that doesn't mean it should be banned or censored in BM, or we can just ban all 'bad' rp's.
Whats offensive or shocking is even more subjective and hard to determine.
Apparently you'd be more offended by pornographic texts then a description of brutal violence for example.
Where I'd be more shocked by violence.
It's very hard for an individual to describe where the line would be crossed and that line is very different for every individual.
Any attempt at finding a middle way wouldn't work any better then doing nothing.
The ignore feature in BM is more then enough to deal with sources of serious shock or offense.
People who write shocking rps can think of adding a warning on top of their rp and perhaps players can be informed upon joining BM of the possibility of being confronted with all kinds of shocking things.
Because BM is a sandbox game and the context is all player based, which is for many of us the beauty of BM.
We shouldn't meddle with that.


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Chenier

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Also to be considered that this game is international and that different cultures have different taboos.
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Blint

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Quote from Nosferatus:
It's very hard for an individual to describe where the line would be crossed and that line is very different for every individual.
Any attempt at finding a middle way wouldn't work any better then doing nothing.
The ignore feature in BM is more then enough to deal with sources of serious shock or offense.
People who write shocking rps can think of adding a warning on top of their rp and perhaps players can be informed upon joining BM of the possibility of being confronted with all kinds of shocking things.
Because BM is a sandbox game and the context is all player based, which is for many of us the beauty of BM.
We shouldn't meddle with that.

I could not agree more.
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Vamking12

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This is pretty mundane stuff for a hostile takeover, from the way you described I assumed it would be a five paragraph description of him thrusting into a ten year old girl while she screams in pain, not generic raping and pillaging that did happen during the middle ages.

MTYL

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Furthermore, from what I've read, it is actually harmful to overly protect post-trauma victims from "triggering" material

That's true. In fact attempts to shield traumatized people from this or that content are almost always hilariously naive, pathetic even. Seeing a big sign saying "there's no excessively violent content here, we removed it all" is for many people just as bad as seeing the excessively violent conent. It furtherly reinforces their feeling of being psychologically "scarred" and different and denies them ability to face it and attempt to develop a healthy reaction to such content.


People who write shocking rps can think of adding a warning on top of their rp and perhaps players can be informed upon joining BM of the possibility of being confronted with all kinds of shocking things.
Because BM is a sandbox game and the context is all player based, which is for many of us the beauty of BM.
We shouldn't meddle with that.

Yep.
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Logar

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Can you perhaps explain your opinion here?
I don't understand why violence would be fine and sex unsuitable or unacceptable.

Personally I find any kind of porn writing ridiculous, the goal of porn is to cause arousal not necessarily tell a story.
In that way you could call it unsuitable as the goal would be to tell a story or add color to events that happen in game, not just to arouse.
I'd call a porn RP probably just a bad RP if it lacks this kind of value.


You pretty much answered the question for me there.

There is a difference between 'erotic' and 'pornographic'. I simply consider 'pornographic' content bad manners. Its already slapped in our faces everytime you go online. For the record, I have never seen anybody in BM post anything of the sort, I was just answering the question. I do find the quality of most RP's ect. exceedingly good.

I do not believe any changes to the current system are needed at all. Leave it as it is. If it aint broke don't fix it.
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Eduardo Almighty

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After 11 years of BM, if you played with my characters, you've probably seen a bit of everything (violence, gore, erotic, a bit of graphic porno, etc...). If not, the wiki is there with a lot of everything.

You always have the option to skip to the next message.
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CryptCypher

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I think the rule about playing as if playing with friends at the dinner table applies here, if someone (or in this case three someones) say they don't like that sort of RP, don't do that sort of RP around them in the future. Not only are there young players, but players who suffered sexual violence who would rather not read that sort of stuff in a game where they came to relax and have fun.

Aramon, I am one such person. Rape-torture survivor, former volunteer sexual abuse group counselor. Major PTSD from the age of 6-7, struggle with lifelong flashbacks, anxiety attacks, the whole nine yards and then some... I for one see no problem with this RP, as it is both describing exactly what these methods of brutal takeover imply, and it was done in a manner entirely parallel to actual historical accounts. I feel it is vital in reminding us that brutal tactics are in fact BRUTAL. Not noble. Not just. Not fair. Not kind. Not liberating. BRUTAL. That nobles and governments who engage in such behavior should be condemned IC, where ethics demand a reaction as dictated by one's culture.

You want bad? Read up on the treatment of the Celtic Queen Boudicca by the Romans. *shudder* There's also a reason why the vast majority of living Asians share the blood of the Khan dynasty. Mongol Empire raped and pillaged most of the known world before converting from Tengri to Islam and settling down.

Not to mention, you did not complain when whats-his-face did those torturing, maiming, and sadistically murdering peasants then wearing their flesh as ornaments RPs that one guy did when I first formed Xavax. That stuff was way worse in comparison... Just saying.
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