Author: Charlemagne (---.zoomnet.net)
Date: 07-20-2002 17:37
Hello there Caryn and all the other folks of my favorite forum.
Basically I thought I'd create a big thread which I hope to get into the best of the forums section by bringing together I think the issue that remains on the mind of many gamers who frequent this rather peculiar system.
Sexuality maturity in gaming
I personally think this should in fact be a column for the RPG and a regular one. No need to argue about maturity here in that some of the stuff I've read in this system would make pornographer's ears burn let alone me.
Basically as best I can understand some of these things the standard issues of sexual maturity in gaming come down to this...
1:) Sexualized Art
This is a major point in that quite a few women (and a number of men themselves) believe that the art contents of certain books are deliberately designed panderings to sexual desires to drool over.
People have made quite the hubub about the Lady Death and Lara Croft Crowd which maintain reputations as exceptionally demeaning and unrealistic portrayals with the spillover crowd forming a substantive point of the fanbase for RPG gamers.
Or does it?
Is the market actually there and are they being pandered to a great deal by specific books.
Ironically a great deal of gamers tie the loss of the mature depictions in the old D&D modules (because of my presece they don't say nudity despite I get what they mean) with the decline of gaming quality.
2:) Sexual reality
I'm currently entering the 1d20 business myself with the idea basically being to create a Mature themed companion to Dungeons and Dragons with a original system called Kitaine "The Storytelling game of Adult fantasy" (though I admit since it's not porn I may want to work on the name-it sounds like a porn title)
Fantasy has always been a place in movies where sexual content is only matched by the teen-college glamorization movie. Robert E. Howard's pulps to the 'last big boom' of Sword and Sorcery films. I shant even touch the cheese/beef cake values of Xena Highlander for their opposite gender than their hero audiences.
Quite a few gamers move directly from Dungeons and Dragons and the fantasy genre to White Wolf and the like because they feel it is impossible to RPG the games they wish to play because the sourcebooks do not address issues of gaming concern and instead keep it child friendly.
The Lord of the Rings/Star Wars and it's ensuing knock offs is a lovely stirring tale of romance and violence but in our Western Culture (and Asian most likely) you shall not see a lesbian relationship or even a mention of the more decadent acts of cultures that deserve it.
Even actual sex between two consenting individuals is taboo.
3:) Sexual Button pushing
White Wolf has proven especially gifted at this (given they are a HORROR game an all) in that they know how and when to push sexual buttons.
The Sabbat adding rape in their opening fiction, the Giovanni incest, the fact that Changelings are usually bisexual or involved in some subculture (*Cough* furries *cough* pooka), Even the August Emperor of Jade from Wraith having consorts when ghosts are the most unsexualized creatures in the universe.
In this case unrealistic sexual identity from bestiality to the asexual vampire line pornography Eternal Hearts produced under their label and eternally panned for the only time a man has ever ****ed a headless corpse (that's the best word for it) in my literature purusing of game fiction.
I admit personally to having cut out Maxim's Neverwinter Night's pinup in their recent issue (my father gets it and I read it for the movie reviews-this is sad really) and am creating a 1d20 system about a 1d20 world dominated by Howardian values (Though equal oppurtunity abuse if anyone cares)
so I am curious, what does one think is too much and too little and what should be the balance for the RPG industry and sex?
Please discuss.
-Charles Phipps
tcp@zoomnet.net
charlemagne1980@hotmail.com
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