Probably a succubus. Yeah, yeah, barbed devil or fire elemental or something would probably be more physically painful, but there are Cure Wounds spells for a reason. The succubus, though, would mean all sorts of psychological trauma.
I think this is an interesting aspect of some RPG settings. A captive character could have their fingers crushed one by one and their eyes gouged out, and a Regenerate spell will completely mend the damage. Such torture might even be less effective on someone who has access to such magic. Once a character has been raped, though, you can’t un-ring that bell.
If Seanbaby’s narration is anything to go by, it would be this.
Sorry, it should be credited to Robert Brockway.
Wow, way to resurrect an EIGHT YEAR OLD THREAD to post some vaguely misogynistic comments. Also, holy ****. Reported.
Missed this in 2008.
I’ve GM’d a number of games in which rape was at least nominally a factor, but always NPC on NPC and not a direct event the players encounter . . . in other words, besieged city is sacked, players have to escape as conquering troops are looting, pillaging, and raping. Never a description of the rape acts, just a general awareness that this is what conquering troops do to cities. At most, in those circumstances, there was a general awareness of the fate that might have awaited the female characters in the party if the party didn’t escape. And, frankly, the male characters might not have been immune either, but they were not caught, and indeed weren’t supposed to be.
The only other rape situation that made its way into my RPG life was as a player, when the GM had us rescuing the daughter of a wealthy Baron who had been kidnapped and was being forced to marry her kidnapper, with the threat that for every day she refused, he’d do some grievous injury to her. We found her on day three missing a little finger and thumb, so the implication was she had resisted… and, anyway, while that was certainly a rape subtext in some sense of the word, the key element was the forced marriage, not so much the sex.
In all of those, I think the presence of the rape element was consistent with the narrative arc and fully appropriate for any teen or adult group of gamers. In no case was rape ever a factor against a PC, in my experience.
Eh, death and lycanthropy are pretty much what it says on the tin when playing an RPG – certainly so for the “You sent twenty men to their graves clearing out a bandit lair” style campaign. You’re an adventurer fighting things with claws and teeth and pointy bits of metal so you’re signing up for the possibility of your character dying (hopefully in some heroic fashion). Losing a limb is really a subset of getting injured with the missing appendage getting magically restored or replaced with a bitching cybernetic or undead lich hand.
Most high fantasy keeps the sexual assault to backstories for half-elf or half-orc offspring and doesn’t market itself as a game of exploration, magic and trying to avoid being raped by hill giants. So while it may be possible to integrate it into a story, I wouldn’t think it’s valid to say “Hey, you might have gotten stabbed by the thieves guild so why are you complaining about them raping you?”
Otyugh, obviously 
Heh–backstory for one of my favorite characters was that he was the son of an orc war party leader and her human captive. The implication was that dad was a prisoner/sex partner for mom, under conditions that were by default rape. I’d totally forgotten about that, and thought I’d not dealt with rape in a game.
I’ve been gaming pretty steadily since the beginning of the 90s and I’ve never dealt with rape in either a humorous or dramatic context. It’s just out-of-place.
I think the examples of gamemasters who put players into situations where their characters were raped without their permission or prior notice were just assholes.
For those who say it’s no big deal compared to the violence that takes place in an RPG… Yes it is because it’s shocking; it’s something unexpected and incongruent. It’s like saying that a racist expletive or groping someone in a football game is nothing compared to violently charging/tackling someone. The violence is part of the game, and it’s something you expect. The other stuff is offensive because nobody has consented to it and it has no place.
grin My half-orc (Dagmar Dorfansdottir) was the child of a female orc and a male Viking who literally fell in love at first sight across a battlefield. (A mischievous love god is suspected as the reason.) They raised her together in a happy, loving home and protected her as much as they could from the teasing she got from both races.
ANYWAY. That said, I would never, ever participate in a game where my character or any PC was sexually assaulted. It would be creepy and I wouldn’t even want to be around those people anymore. Ewwww.
We had an Evil Campaign fall apart partly because one of the players insisted on describing in great detail the torture and evil he was doing, and then getting upset when the rest of us told him we didn’t want to hear it.
While if my character was captured by Orcs or Demons or something, I would expect bad things to happen, I prefer they be unspoken. If the GM was to start describing such things, especially to get a rise out of me, I’d put a stop to it. By leaving and never returning if necessary.
Gaming is a fun social event. When the GM is being a dick to the players themselves, or by proxy via mistreating their PCs, then that person should not be running a game. Just as when someone decides he needs to be the ‘thief who steals from the group’ or ‘the wizard who keeps nuking his own party’. As I tell these people, our characters are not in any way required to adventure with yours, and if you freely give us a reason not to, then I’m happy to proclaim that my character would never trust yours with his life and you can either make a more reasonable character, or I can walk.
In college, I and a friend were in a LARP where we played a couple of nasty-ass evil vampires for a single session. We reveled in designing our tortures for mere mortals. I was a big Clive Barker fan at the time and pulled on his body horror for inspiration.
At one point, a woman playing the game walked into the room and asked what was up. We obliged with a description, thinking she’d respond in-character. Nope. She was pretty freaked out and left posthaste.
That was a formative moment for me, realizing that there need to be boundaries in game settings like that.
One of the LARPs I’m involved with has a “Yellow Light/Red Light” policy. Saying “Yellow Light” indicates that the person you’re interacting with is getting into territory that makes you uncomfortable and they should tone it down. “Red Light” is the “That crossed the line. Disengage immediately.” code phrase; the person it’s called on is required to stop interacting with the person who called it entirely.
Interestingly, the mere existence of the policy seems to have had a deterrent effect; I don’t recall any “Red Light” incidents since it was implemented and few, if any, “Yellow Light” ones.
Out of curiosity, I’m interested in your response to the scenario I GM’d lo those many years ago:
Imagine changing it up slightly, so that the characters’ party was caught by a band of looting, raping, and pillaging soldiers. I’d argue there that it has a narrative consistency and isn’t gratuitous. (Not a gratuitously detailed assault, of course, but the fact that both women and men might be robbed and sexually assaulted in the course of the organic flow of the story).
If I were a GM today, I’d almost certainly explore the topic ahead of time and find some way to save the character if a given player felt personally uncomfortable with that outcome, but I do think the above is a fair example of the topic occurring in a reasonable way.
Perhaps, but I struggle to think of what it would add to a typical campaign to make it worth the risk of alienating players. If I really (for some reason) thought it was important to make sexual assault upon the characters a topic, I would perhaps make a guard make some leading remark only to be rebuked by his superior or, if the boss needed to be known as a bad rapey dude, have a fellow guard warn the soldier that Captain Rapist-Guy wouldn’t want the guard indulging before him. Then just not bring it up again – everyone knows that they’re that sort of guy but the party doesn’t need to spend time worrying about if the campaign is about to take a swing from stabbing kobolds to forced sex.
Most likely though, I just wouldn’t say that much because I can’t imagine any benefits. Maybe just say that the guards leer at you or something; everyone can figure out what that means.
I don’t think too many people are going to upset if you use the phrase “raping and pillaging” to describe what an army is doing.
I think most people are going to be upset if sexually assault their character without so much as checking to see if that sort of content is remotely okay.
I’m pretty sure that when I run a campaign, and goblins leap out from behind a horse to stab at the PCs, no player has ever:
- Been ambushed by goblins;
- Been jumped at by anyone hiding behind a horse;
- Been stabbed.
The third is the likeliest one of these. I’m also pretty sure that if one of my players HAS been stabbed, and they’re still playing D&D, they’re not someone who experiences PTSD from imagining being stabbed again.
Rape, though? There’s a nontrivial chance that if I’m playing with women, one of the women in the group has been sexually assaulted before. There’s an almost certain chance if I’m playing with women that the women in the group spend nontrivial time in their life on guard against sexual assault.
If I advertised my new game: “D&D: Now with more sexual assault!” and someone wanted to play in it, I could feel comfortable that folks in this group aren’t going to get freaked out by roleplaying someone sexually assaulted. But if I bring it up in a game where that’s not part of the advertisement, I think that’s pretty unfair.
Yes, exploring it ahead of time would be the best approach, if you think that scene will genuinely add to the game. For me, however, I can’t imagine adding it to a game. Just not fun.
wow that cartoon is soo spot I haven’t seen an rpg cartoon since the everquest one …
I assume you are looking for Zombie?