[MUD-Dev] Re:

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Wed, 27 Aug 1997 15:47:48 PST8PDT, clawrenc at cup.hp.com wrote:

>>We are talking a  VERY personal invasion of privacy on a
>>psychological level, and roleplay by definitio nis a psychologoical
>>exercise.
>
>Given a non-immersive RP game, if necessary a GOP game or at least a
>game with little concentration on RP, would your position change?

Mine wouldn't. I maintain: rape adds nothing to the game, and can
potentially cause some severe problems. There is no upside. What's the
point? Why is sex even important in a non-RP based game? If there's no
RP, then you generally discard a lot. Why is rape okay if you distance
yourself from it? Why is distancing yourself from a heinous and
despicable crime something we should encourage? 

>Would you assert that a rape dramatised in a MUD bears anything near
>the magnitude of the strength of effect of a rape IRL?

Would you possibly go and check into some information on post-traumatic
stress disorder, a condition most commonly associated with Vietnam
veterans -- and rape survivors? Most of us readily admit that the
horrors of the Vietnam conflict are beyond the average civilian's
ability to comprehend, yet there are people who actually won't admit
that maybe in the case of rape they have absolutely no clue how utterly
AWFUL it is? 

>Note: I'm not trolling here.  I've already posted my current position
>on the area.  I'm interested in divining the underpinnings to other's
>reactions.  My suspicion is that the anathem is due to the relation of
>a virtual incident to the horror a RL incident, and that the virtual
>incident in fact has little emotive impact in itself due to its
>diversion from RL (ie virtual-ness).

That's true, but nothing ever happens in a vacuum. Any good gamemaster
has realised that the majority of his world's realism comes from the
players' relation of the events in the game to events that they have
experienced or witnessed. In this case, the players either have no real
world basis -- in which case the result is meaningless -- or you achieve
a purely negative effect. No rape victim ever says "Gee, that was fun,
can we do it again sometime?" No one ever dreams of being a rape victim.
And anyone on your game who seriously dreams of being a rapist should be
taken out and shot.

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 You see me now, a veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I've been 
 living on the edge so long, where the winds of limbo roar. And 
 I'm young enough to get involved, too old to see, all the scars 
 are on the inside; I'm not sure that there's anything left of me
               -- Blue Oyster Cult, "Veteran of the Psychic Wars"
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