Creeptastic RPGs
Jan. 29th, 2014 02:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethAm reading the introduction to Ars Magica 4th Edition, which I think I got free from a site that sells a bunch of stuff.
I'm not sure I want to finish reading the introduction.
I was hoping for a game about the worldchanging possibilities of magic.
So far, it starts out as the diary of a teenager who gets magic and uses it on a woman to get her drunk and rape her. He hasn't thought the word and I'm not sure the story knows that's what he just did, he just uses magic to change her mind and get sex. And then the bad consequence is she had a boyfriend who sends his friends out to beat the magician up, but he gets out of that unharmed. It's not even that the girl objects once the spell wears off, it's just that another bloke had claimed her. It's blatantly sexist creepy rape culture stuff and really the only way reading the rest of the introduction would be worth it is if it turns out the story, against the odds, does know exactly how much of a creep the point of view character just was, and has him go to the bad and come to a bad end.
... there's only three more pages, even if they do have tiny print. and I'm bad at not finishing stories.
... and oh the lack of surprise when it all turns out well for the magician. with bonus servant girls enchanted to serve his every need. ew.
Of all the myriad possibilities, it introduced the setting with on the one hand the story of a woman failing in her epic quest and on the other a man using magic to coerce sex.
Fail.
And fail from 2003.
If this is what it considers the selling point of the setting, count me out.
I'm not sure I want to finish reading the introduction.
I was hoping for a game about the worldchanging possibilities of magic.
So far, it starts out as the diary of a teenager who gets magic and uses it on a woman to get her drunk and rape her. He hasn't thought the word and I'm not sure the story knows that's what he just did, he just uses magic to change her mind and get sex. And then the bad consequence is she had a boyfriend who sends his friends out to beat the magician up, but he gets out of that unharmed. It's not even that the girl objects once the spell wears off, it's just that another bloke had claimed her. It's blatantly sexist creepy rape culture stuff and really the only way reading the rest of the introduction would be worth it is if it turns out the story, against the odds, does know exactly how much of a creep the point of view character just was, and has him go to the bad and come to a bad end.
... there's only three more pages, even if they do have tiny print. and I'm bad at not finishing stories.
... and oh the lack of surprise when it all turns out well for the magician. with bonus servant girls enchanted to serve his every need. ew.
Of all the myriad possibilities, it introduced the setting with on the one hand the story of a woman failing in her epic quest and on the other a man using magic to coerce sex.
Fail.
And fail from 2003.
If this is what it considers the selling point of the setting, count me out.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-29 04:42 am (UTC)I don't think I'd be willing to play it with a pack of guys who struck me as the more common "must have a character with the biggest numbers somewhere on the character sheet" type. Nor the Binder of Shame crowd.