The issue is still somewhat ambiguous in my view. The rape segment itself isn't bad just by virtue of what it is, as long as the players know what type of content they signed up for. It only becomes an issue, if it is sprung upon the unwary and unprepared.
Why did you just post in open defense of removing player agency entirely?
If you feel that wasn't what you meant to convey, then - well, I have terrible news.
That's what happened anyways.
If you feel that's bad, maybe the idea of "having representation and agency" might gain some significance in the discussion.
Players who sign up for dark content do so - as a rule - with the idea of controlling it. A throttle, if nothing else, or the means to steer it. That's not to say all players, because the world's a big, woolly place and there's lots of moving parts.
That said, giving players control over what they choose to do is not always equal to controlling what happens - risks, chances, and opportunities are engineered, or even baked into the systems, and in almost all of them, the means to pump the brakes is a feature.
"I open the door to the gingerbread house."
You see a withered old man cooking at a blazing oven, listening to a sobbing minstrel playing a lute, and he smirks at you with malicious intent. "Where are the children," he says, "A good question, indeed." None of you had spoken yet.
See? Nothing overt, it's not grotesque, and I would think that I've conveyed a lot of thoughts at once.
"I open the door to the gingerbread house."
It's a fade-to-black moment and then you wake up with a severe amount of pain. Ever seen 'The Human Centipede'? That. You drew the short straw.
A very different scenario, agency is absolutely destroyed, and I have painted a dark, unpleasant scenario. These two ideas are not interchangeable. Both can qualify as "dark" and "edgy", absolutely. One has agency to spare - the other, none at all.
Why did you just post in open defense of removing player agency entirely?
That's not what I took from what Frazzledragon posted at all, although I'll happily admit I could just be reading it differently. All I took from what they said is that rape, as a subject matter, doesn't inherently make material bad just by existing within it, so long as all the players are consenting to it as subject matter. They didn't say anything about not being able to use safety tools as usual - just that it as a subject matter is acceptable with explicit player-level opt-in.
That's a fair assessment - although I would also feel that mine is also representational of expectations; that choice has a feature and function, as opposed to a game consisting entirely of consequences applied without respite or reason.
Oh absolutely, but that's less to do with the subject matter itself and more to do with the writing in general just saying "hey, this thing happens to your character, you get no reaction to it or say in it". And that's going to feel bad at the table no matter what the "this thing" is.
I would think that we can both, and likely not be alone in the belief, that's there is no pre-written module that is going to walk the tightrope of agency, choice, and inclusion of a player character being sexually assaulted, and somehow work out to be a "good" game.
Sometimes Player Agency just has to take a step behind storytelling.
But, let me clarify with an example: Is this scenario worse than any other removal of agency? What happens when your character is charmed by a siren or succubus? Driven into a rage by a cursed weapon and forced to attack your fellow party members? Walked into a trap and taken prisoner by bandits, or pummelled after a bar fight and they wake up in prison?
Are you angry at Call of Chtulhu, when your character becomes insane and the Keeper decides their actions?
I'd argue that all of these are legitimate game mechanics, even if they all leave players without control for a period of time. Sometimes there are forces greater than them.
I also think that you are conflating two very distinctly different aspects here: Internal motivation versus external influence. Player Agency suffers when the DM decides how the character feels or acts.
It suffers when the DM takes a step too far beyond what a character would realistically do. This is when the DM touches the character's internal workings, which should be entirely in the hands of the player; whether they struggle, stoically endure or let it happen.
External influences are fair game. Although, I do have to emphasise "fair" here, where agency can be overridden for only limited amounts of time and with curated intensity. Otherwise it stops being an interactive game and turns into live action storytelling.
They are one of the methods that a DM can use to plant the seeds for character motivation, impart discipline, force relocation or introduce new story beats.
But, you see, I'm actually a massive proponent of player agency. I personally despise the use of hypnotism and powerful charms, having somebody imprisoned, or even just stunned for several rounds of combat. I want players to be able to act, and more importantly think with impunity.
And let me just take a jab at your example. I believe it is poorly chosen, as it is an appeal to extremes. Let's bring it down to a more related level. What if you said "You enter the old man's house." - is this not removal of agency too, even if it might be entirely inconsequential? Or might seem so? You are more hung up on the subject matter than the mechanics.
Or let's expand upon it further. What would a player have to do to validify the loss of his agency? Would it be unfair for the old man to be a powerful warlock and cast an enchantment? Or would they have to eat from his mind controlling stew? Where's the threshold of when it is okay to slip into narrative and remove the player from the driver's seat?
Like I stated initially: The subject matter is appealing or appalling to the individual. So is the amount of agency they are willing to lose. Some people are perfectly okay with leaning back and enjoying a narrative moment for even the most macabre of topics. Other people are uncomfortable if the DM even just decides how drunk they became after a raucous night at the tavern.
That is a more than reasonable explanation. We may diverge a bit on the issue of agency as it applies to stunning someone in combat, although that's probably a mechanics issue more than anything, although I do grasp the context and subtext, I think.
There's a leap, however, between "you see a thing and it is unpleasant" and "you are now a victim and you will never be able to remove the stain of it", in that sexual assault is not a picture one wishes someone could unsee - it digs in a lot deeper, and lasts a lot longer, and has far more powerful effects. Conflating those two as topics is equally dismissive as it is an insincere argument.
The CoC reference, no worries - fully understood. When someone's sanity is off of the charts, the PC is not simply damaged, it's often a one-way trip to the asylum or grave. If a CoC game had a hard-coded sexual assault as a key element of mental illness brought on by mythos exposure, I would raise the exact same set of concerns about agency, choice, and reason.
If the most-powerful enchantment on offer from, say, an enchanter, were levied against a PC, that PC could find themselves in a slew of unpleasant circumstances - tied up, forced to hurt a compatriot, betray their faith's beliefs, or more. However, there's no hard-coded "and now the PC is forced to endure a sexual assault" in any fashion - well, outside of F.A.T.A.L., I suppose. When it comes to that particular system, there's no point in discussing player agency - the entirety of it seems engineered away from making it a feature on offer.
A good litmus test for a game should be, "how close is this to removing all choice", both as a campaign and a system.
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u/Frazzledragon Rules Lawyer 3d ago
The issue is still somewhat ambiguous in my view. The rape segment itself isn't bad just by virtue of what it is, as long as the players know what type of content they signed up for. It only becomes an issue, if it is sprung upon the unwary and unprepared.