Horror play is a different beast than your run of the mill ttrpg crowd. You are trying to ride a line where you get under someone’s skin but not enough to actually cause them to tap out. Flirting with the darkness is the point. Sometimes themes of sexualized violence find their way into horror, particularly if you are aping off of old school horror tropes. It is a gold standard rule to never impose sexual violence on a player character generally and it is safer over all to just exclude it entirely from games that are not an excersise in giving you the actual chills.
Most gothic horror stuff D&D modules pass for horror is actually pretty calculated. It still follows the curve of a power fantasy but with a Halloween haunted house-y coat of paint. Curse of Straud for instance will give you all manner of tropes you would find from R. L Stien novels from Goosebumps to the stuff targeted towards young adults but it’s still designed to be overcome. You gain more powers as you go and become more capable and expect to have a fair shot of surviving because you are heroes.
The hard core horror players look for a different curve. You are never more capable than you will be at the start of the story. Some things are designed to give you odds of survival where the question is not if someone will die but when. You might be fortunate to lose half the party… It is sort of a trust exercise. Going into a table that seeks to spook you properly you let people know your weaknesses because your DM is trying to hit you in a way that is disturbing but tolerable. Coming away from that kind of experience actually can make for pretty solid friendships because sharing a faux traumatic event allows circumstances for you all to be vulnerable together provided it is done in a space where everyone knows they are safe.
While I still find it odd, I suppose I was thinking of it more in the sense of a traditional D&D campaign than a horror driven one despite the original comment saying such. I still feel like even in most horror video games the threat of your player character actually being raped or sexually assaulted is extremely uncommon as opposed to a movie or book because you are playing the role of the character, and so even in the context of a horror rpg the idea of putting that into a campaign just seems strange to me. I’m not judging people who play that way as long as everyone consents and knows what they’re getting into… I suppose I just don’t understand the desire to do so
This is a valid question, which could also be asked of Alien. It’s as simple as some people like to be scared, whether to explore personal feelings on a specific type of fear or purely to be scared. For some players, that a game addresses a fear they rarely explore is an enormous bonus.
Your confusion is understandable. Games that directly address the same themes of sexual violence as Alien are a minuscule niche inside an already small niche. But I can tell you as a horror GM that even a whiff of an exotic, earnestly held fear, as long as the player is willing to engage, cuts deeper than hours of classic slasher horror. It doesn’t have to go as far as even Alien, just a little taboo horror as seasoning, but even that needs consent.
I love Alien and it doesn’t bother me personally though I can understand and respect why some would not feel comfortable about it. I meant specifically in a game or roleplaying scenario and honestly misunderstood the comment to mean a DM inserting literal rape or sexual assault into their campaign as something that could actually play out against player characters and that’s my bad
D&D is very poorly weighted for hardcore horror. I don’t think I mentioned D&D in my original comment but I could be wrong. Other ttrpgs are way better. Shadows of Esterun, Call of Cthulhu, SLA Industries and Dread would be better options if you want to dip your toes in.
It’s way more common for aspects of sexual violence to be sort of more alluded to in the past tense and almost NEVER happen to a PC unless the player themselves makes it an aspect of their character that happened in the past. It’s damn near never something graphically described at the table in real time.
Inclusion realistically often looks like small references made by the NPC living victims of serial killers being held captive who speak a little about the horrors they’ve experienced but trail off before they get graphic… A bit of somebody’s backstory or allusions to the weird monster that kidnaps and beheads it’s victims is doing it because it of weird reproductive purpose… but it is a rare table that actually will not call a FULL stop to play if someone starts full on beat for beat trying to describe a detailed rape scene in progress or a monster basically doing weird reproductive stuff to an NPC in present tense much less a player.
Most of the time with something like that you employ “veils” where something as an idea is introduced as a factor to make something more horrible but you don’t really describe it in detail. You let the abstraction make it tolerable.
I personally might consider use of extremely mild themes of reproductive horror in a game but I personally draw the line at targeted sexual assault being any part of that. I neither want to risk triggering somebody’s PTSD or anybody’s weird anime porn related kink by accident so it’s not something I would personally run. I am not personally triggered by their inclusion but with straight up rape it’s easy for the way things play out to be in poor taste and only a few GMs I have played with actually used the themes for anything that felt thematically poignant and not just trashy. Most of the time the risks just outweigh the rewards by magnitudes and in a safety focused culture that shit flies like a chunk of lead.
Mind you old school tables were pretty brutal, even your average D and ;D campaign not billing itself as a horror might have had a rape situation thrown in as window dressing for a sacked town or female prisoners in a camp. I remember a couple of DMs I used to play with really thought nothing about chucking it in just to make stuff feel gritty and “realistic”. The culture of tabletop has moved into a much kinder place in the past decade for which I am personally quite grateful. What was once the domain of horror gaming safety techniques have been adopted by regular players now.
Yes I misunderstood, I thought the commenter was referring to an “unveiled” scenario that could play out against player characters themselves and was disturbed. Admittedly the concept of a Xenomorph reproduction cycle or something similar doesn’t really bother me so much as live people being literally raped and being forcibly impregnated by innsmouth fish folk or goblins like Lovecraft inspired stuff or Berserk. If it’s referred to in past tense or alluded to like in Shadow Over Innsmouth I can move past it usually, but if it’s straight up depicted like in Berserk or Necronomicon by Alan Moore then that’s just way too far for me personally, but I still enjoy other aspects of those universes and try not to make any judgements on the authors or people who aren’t bothered by those things.
I… am the original commenter? Good gods I hope that was not the general takeaway of my original post. I have heard far too many horror stories of GMs using sexual violence on PCs and it is just…
I know rape fantasies are a thing some people are into but I feel like bringing that wholesale in to a TTRPG setting is more the domain of like the extreme edge of BDSM culture.
Horror play is a different beast than your run of the mill ttrpg crowd. You are trying to ride a line where you get under someone’s skin but not enough to actually cause them to tap out. Flirting with the darkness is the point. Sometimes themes of sexualized violence find their way into horror, particularly if you are aping off of old school horror tropes. It is a gold standard rule to never impose sexual violence on a player character generally and it is safer over all to just exclude it entirely from games that are not an excersise in giving you the actual chills.
Most gothic horror stuff D&D modules pass for horror is actually pretty calculated. It still follows the curve of a power fantasy but with a Halloween haunted house-y coat of paint. Curse of Straud for instance will give you all manner of tropes you would find from R. L Stien novels from Goosebumps to the stuff targeted towards young adults but it’s still designed to be overcome. You gain more powers as you go and become more capable and expect to have a fair shot of surviving because you are heroes.
The hard core horror players look for a different curve. You are never more capable than you will be at the start of the story. Some things are designed to give you odds of survival where the question is not if someone will die but when. You might be fortunate to lose half the party… It is sort of a trust exercise. Going into a table that seeks to spook you properly you let people know your weaknesses because your DM is trying to hit you in a way that is disturbing but tolerable. Coming away from that kind of experience actually can make for pretty solid friendships because sharing a faux traumatic event allows circumstances for you all to be vulnerable together provided it is done in a space where everyone knows they are safe.
While I still find it odd, I suppose I was thinking of it more in the sense of a traditional D&D campaign than a horror driven one despite the original comment saying such. I still feel like even in most horror video games the threat of your player character actually being raped or sexually assaulted is extremely uncommon as opposed to a movie or book because you are playing the role of the character, and so even in the context of a horror rpg the idea of putting that into a campaign just seems strange to me. I’m not judging people who play that way as long as everyone consents and knows what they’re getting into… I suppose I just don’t understand the desire to do so
This is a valid question, which could also be asked of Alien. It’s as simple as some people like to be scared, whether to explore personal feelings on a specific type of fear or purely to be scared. For some players, that a game addresses a fear they rarely explore is an enormous bonus.
Your confusion is understandable. Games that directly address the same themes of sexual violence as Alien are a minuscule niche inside an already small niche. But I can tell you as a horror GM that even a whiff of an exotic, earnestly held fear, as long as the player is willing to engage, cuts deeper than hours of classic slasher horror. It doesn’t have to go as far as even Alien, just a little taboo horror as seasoning, but even that needs consent.
I love Alien and it doesn’t bother me personally though I can understand and respect why some would not feel comfortable about it. I meant specifically in a game or roleplaying scenario and honestly misunderstood the comment to mean a DM inserting literal rape or sexual assault into their campaign as something that could actually play out against player characters and that’s my bad
D&D is very poorly weighted for hardcore horror. I don’t think I mentioned D&D in my original comment but I could be wrong. Other ttrpgs are way better. Shadows of Esterun, Call of Cthulhu, SLA Industries and Dread would be better options if you want to dip your toes in.
It’s way more common for aspects of sexual violence to be sort of more alluded to in the past tense and almost NEVER happen to a PC unless the player themselves makes it an aspect of their character that happened in the past. It’s damn near never something graphically described at the table in real time.
Inclusion realistically often looks like small references made by the NPC living victims of serial killers being held captive who speak a little about the horrors they’ve experienced but trail off before they get graphic… A bit of somebody’s backstory or allusions to the weird monster that kidnaps and beheads it’s victims is doing it because it of weird reproductive purpose… but it is a rare table that actually will not call a FULL stop to play if someone starts full on beat for beat trying to describe a detailed rape scene in progress or a monster basically doing weird reproductive stuff to an NPC in present tense much less a player.
Most of the time with something like that you employ “veils” where something as an idea is introduced as a factor to make something more horrible but you don’t really describe it in detail. You let the abstraction make it tolerable.
I personally might consider use of extremely mild themes of reproductive horror in a game but I personally draw the line at targeted sexual assault being any part of that. I neither want to risk triggering somebody’s PTSD or anybody’s weird anime porn related kink by accident so it’s not something I would personally run. I am not personally triggered by their inclusion but with straight up rape it’s easy for the way things play out to be in poor taste and only a few GMs I have played with actually used the themes for anything that felt thematically poignant and not just trashy. Most of the time the risks just outweigh the rewards by magnitudes and in a safety focused culture that shit flies like a chunk of lead.
Mind you old school tables were pretty brutal, even your average D and ;D campaign not billing itself as a horror might have had a rape situation thrown in as window dressing for a sacked town or female prisoners in a camp. I remember a couple of DMs I used to play with really thought nothing about chucking it in just to make stuff feel gritty and “realistic”. The culture of tabletop has moved into a much kinder place in the past decade for which I am personally quite grateful. What was once the domain of horror gaming safety techniques have been adopted by regular players now.
Yes I misunderstood, I thought the commenter was referring to an “unveiled” scenario that could play out against player characters themselves and was disturbed. Admittedly the concept of a Xenomorph reproduction cycle or something similar doesn’t really bother me so much as live people being literally raped and being forcibly impregnated by innsmouth fish folk or goblins like Lovecraft inspired stuff or Berserk. If it’s referred to in past tense or alluded to like in Shadow Over Innsmouth I can move past it usually, but if it’s straight up depicted like in Berserk or Necronomicon by Alan Moore then that’s just way too far for me personally, but I still enjoy other aspects of those universes and try not to make any judgements on the authors or people who aren’t bothered by those things.
I… am the original commenter? Good gods I hope that was not the general takeaway of my original post. I have heard far too many horror stories of GMs using sexual violence on PCs and it is just…
I know rape fantasies are a thing some people are into but I feel like bringing that wholesale in to a TTRPG setting is more the domain of like the extreme edge of BDSM culture.
Sorry I just got several replies and didn’t notice is all