Sexual Assault in D&D -- an antipathy spell I failed to save against

Hi. Been a while.

I owe you an explanation for my long hiatus. Well, that actually depends on who you are, but I do owe the 3 or so people who are actually going to read this an explanation.

Some time ago, a lull in the dndblog campaign led to some discussion of the question "what are the most memorable moments of the campaign so far?" And I think my response was some of the distinctive game-action moments. But it occurs to me now (especially now) that those aren't actually what I remember most vividly.

Until February, the most vivid moment was Bishop anally raping a half-orc with a hot poker. Which is still a creditable second. But Slthm ejaculating on Drusilla, having his penis ruptured (or not), with attendant jokes from Gonzo Gamer, and Scott casually "moving the game along" -- there's Grimlocks to kill, you know -- has clawed its way deep, deep into my brain.

And I'm not cool with either of those. Frankly, I'm surprised you are.

Figuring out why I'm so upset by the Slthm-Drusilla scene has been instructive for me. Of course, there is the nature of the thing -- coming on someone against their will is a particularly violent and repellent act, not sexual in any sort of good way. (Hannibal Lecter and I agree on this.) And of course, this is a narrative, not factual, which makes it worse. Gonzo thought (and presumably still thinks) that "a taste for sexual harassment is a nice touch for any PC!" I don't think I can communicate how much I disagree.

Dungeons & Dragons is, partly, a jointly developed story. The skeletal structure of the rules presumes an adventure story of heroic action. The DM develops the setting and the plot, and the players provide the characters. I want to contribute to a story of overcoming adversity, conquering evil through courage and wits. But now we've got a story in which the one woman is treated like...like a fucktoy, is the only way I can think of to say it. Aaron's participation in this endeavor is playing and developing Drusilla's character, and his/her serious acts are met with "oh, Slthm's into S&M, and spews on her". I don't have any interest in being a part of that story.

It's gratuitous, but I don't care about that. It's prurient. It's debasing. I used to encourage my wife to read what we were up to on the blog. I thought about telling my students about the blog, and encouraging them to check it out if they hadn't seen games like this before. Mentioning the blog's current webpage to a class now would be professional suicide. With good reason.

I'm probably coming across as prudish, which I think Jacob will confirm I'm not. I think there's a swirl of issues that have come to a head, and it's more than just my visceral response to Slthm's scripted behavior that I have trouble coping with.

Going back to the collaborative storytelling idea: D&D players have conflicting motives. Once the character is developed, we want the character's actions to reflect that character. But separate and sometimes in opposition to that, we want to preserve the storytelling experience -- to keep playing the game. Barik found these humans irresponsible, corrupt, foolish, hostile -- and yet came up with reasons that he should go along with them. At times Grell, Bishop, Acavel and Slthm have earned the distrust and dislike (to put it mildly) of the party, and yet we have put up with each other and even sacrificed ourselves to help other members who clearly weren't worth it in-game, but we were focused on the big picture of "making it all work" rather than just playing our roles.

Feeling like the DM is just screwing with you is pretty common (and usually just paranoia from a run of bad luck), but in this case, another player is causing the problem. Gonzo has more or less said he's screwing with us -- "I've never played such a disruptive character -- I'm having a blast!" is the message I'm getting from him. In other words, he's having a great time putting us in the position of having to choose "keeping the game going" rather than "playing my character's role", because he's been playing his role with complete disregard for keeping the game going.

This is exactly the same message I got from an irritating jock when he announced how much he liked just trying to get under people's skin sometimes, really prod at them until they couldn't take it. There's a word for a person who is consciously trying to make your life difficult because it amuses him. The word is asshole. I didn't have the impression until recently that Gonzo was an asshole, but one thing I'm sure of, I don't like playing games with assholes.

I was (literally) dumbfounded by the response, or lack thereof, by the DM (and his PC, Bishop) in this scene. Gonzo started the whole "horn-dog" moment, but the DM followed it to its grisly conclusion, and then tried to move on as if nothing of significance had happened. I felt rather similarly back at the Bishop torture scene, which Scott clearly laid out in careful detail, then remained obstinately unresponsive as Barik and Acavel refused to let it drop. I was trying to convey then that both I and my character are not okay with this, and that if that's the sort of thing we can expect out of this story, we'll pack up and head for a less evil place. Now that I think of it, we haven't seen the "bad guys" in this adventure do anything as evil as members of our own party. (The hill giants eating Agar is the closest, and I suppose Acavel has suffered dire stuff in hell, but that doesn't seem the same.)

It's late -- I'm going to start summarizing.

As you know, we all have various pulls on our time. Work is demanding more of my time than it used to (new job), family, the everyday tedium of living, and thankfully several avenues of recreation. For the last month and a half, it's been more appealing to play PlayStation games or read comic books (From Hell has taken quite a bit of time -- lots of chapter notes) than to try to wrestle with the issues of the dndblog. Because, frankly, this whole scene's left a bad taste in my mouth. And the one thing Scott's DMing philosophy and the limitations of the blog format guarantee is that it's going to be a long long time before we reach another shortlived "victory moment".

So, I kept not getting around to it and kept not getting around to it, until here we are. I know, my nonresponsiveness is a lousy coping mechanism. That's been made abundantly clear to me several times before, but it's a negative behavior I have that I may never be able to shake. I apologize for disappearing for so long without a word. As the last several years indicate, it doesn't happen all that often, and I'll try not to do it again.

Which brings us to the present. What do I do now? Well, blogwise there's nothing to do -- Barik is apparently Stone-boy of the Nine Toes at the moment. I hadn't meant for this to come off this way, but looking back over this, it looks a lot like a "here's why I'm ditching the blog" message. That's not my intention.

But let's be honest. Maybe you're just thrilled by all the edginess and drama that ejaculating gnolls and anal penetration with hot pokers provide. Maybe you find delicious the feeling of being on tenterhooks because of the maverick play of characters who don't care what the fate of their character, the party, or the game is. That's fine. If that's the way you want to play it, then maybe Barik would be happier off doing something else.

That's not what I want. Overall, I've enjoyed the experience of the blog, I want to know how the story turns out. It's been fun to get back in touch with Jacob and Aaron, and interesting to find out how two strangers (John and myself) who I'm pretty sure wouldn't abide being in the same room in real life can meaningfully work together and communicate in this game. Until these recent events, I had the impression that Fabio was an interesting guy that has some common research interests with me. I don't want to leave.

I'm not trying to make this as some sort of ultimatum or a "I'll come back with these conditions" kind of thing. If Barik gets unstoned, I'll play him. I'm not telling you what to do -- but I am telling you, if this story continues down the road it seems to be, which seems to me to end with turning Drusilla into nothing more than the butt of doggie-style sex comments and the game disintegrating into a competition of whose character is the most entertainingly dysfunctional, my entry's going to be that Barik commits suicide, death by opposing army if possible, but he's not picky. That Barik, such a zany guy.

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