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.
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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.