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One of the many reasons why Alien is so incredible
(lemmy.world)
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Why does anyone need to survey players on their tolerance for sexual violence in the first place? Like are there that many DM’s trying to put that in their actual campaigns?
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