Current mood:	aggravated
Current music:	Weird Al - Couch Potato

It's a matter of taste.
This is another old rant regarding the White Wolf chats and concentrating mostly on the Changeling part of the chat, but these are hot buttons that have pervaded nearly every online game that I've seen. If it's a moderated game and the mod is cool with it, then that's the mod's choice. This is mostly regarding more freeform games - YMMV.

This rant addresses the highly subjective matter of storylines and tastefulness. I've been frustrated and (mostly) silent in the past regarding this issue, but a certain storyline that I saw come and go in the chat that pushed me a bit over the edge. It's regarding a 12 year old pregnant through consensual sex with a MUCH older character (the 12 year old character lost the baby and the older character was killed in an unrelated incident - this is NOT the same storyline as the Vicki drama I posted about before). The following are my suggestions for those who seem to lack the basic common sense regarding tasteful and non-insane roleplaying.

This is not a slam on any one player or any one game, though I'm more than fed up with the examples that have prompted this rant. This is a general frustration that has built up over nearly ten years of gaming in the White Wolf chats. The last pregnant childling that was there was over six years ago, and I thought I'd never see another one until the above example.

Keeping that in mind, here are some suggestions, which I thought would be common sense, but apparently it's lacking in a bunch of people. These are only my opinion, of course, but I think they make good guidelines:

1. If you want to play a sexually active character, play one that's at LEAST old enough to have had her period/reached puberty. I don't care how many examples you can cite about how you/people you know have had sexy by age 8, it doesn't have a place in a -public- online game. Neither do 13-15 year olds, IMO, but at least they're more "acceptable" than 12. And for Dog's sake, DON'T give your 12-13 year old character the Merit of "Sex Appeal" or "Animal Magnetism" or Appearance specialties of "alluring" or "sexy". Those traits do NOT belong on people that young, as the only people that would find a prepubescent sexy would be pedophiles.

2. If you want to play a character that is/was a victim of sexual abuse, read up on it. Find out how it affects present and future behavior and play it realistically. A badly portrayed character of this type is an insult to all who have survived such abuses. Women don't become ravenous lesbian sluts because of what a man has done to them. An abused character has so little self-esteem and, IMO, does NOT make a good PC (and people quickly tire of trying to comfort/reassure an angst-magnet). A survivor of such abuse, on the other hand, can be a beautiful thing, if played properly. (see point #7 later).

3. If you want to have a character get -willingly- pregnant, make it one that's at LEAST 16. I don't care how many examples you can cite about younger kids getting pregnant, IMO it has no place in a public online game. Also, if you want to play a pregnant character, -please- read up on the grisly reality of what it does to a woman's body. For those of you who even -think- about getting a Mage to fiddle with Time and Life magic to speed things up, picture everything that you've read happening all at once. You don't just pop out a baby and show up the next day in your middy t-shirt, showing off the infant with nary a stretch mark to be seen (yes, this has happened MANY times over the years).

4. (pretty much freeform only)You and only you have the last say in what happens to your character. If a situation arises in which another player or character (that's not the GM) is going to make your character suffer (or gain) beyond what you want to handle, you have the right to say "no."

5. (ditto on freeform) However, if you DON'T say no, don't even think of using "So-and-so did it, I didn't want it to happen," excuse when your character bemoans her fate, thus prompting people to say, "What the -bleep- were you thinking!"

(this is something that was a habit of 'forcing' players to do things like make percentage dice rolls to see if the condom broke - this was perfect to make the angst-bunnies wail over their pregnancy and the fact that they couldn't abort. It got -so- old. See point #9)

6. For those who would play characters that inflict said suffering, know that there will be IC consequences for these actions. You are not invulnerable, and you are not TEH K3WL3ST villain to happen to the WW chats since Vampire Room 1 and 2. And when (not if) your character is caught or made to take responsibility for these actions, don't you DARE think of whining and saying that everyone's coming down on you for no reason.

7. Again, for those of you who love to play victims and the character gets attacked/beaten up/raped/whatever, DON'T have them "all better" by the next week and boinking whoever helped them "recover"

Victims become survivors by working through their experience and coming out stronger because of it, not by forgetting it happened because the character knew either mundane or magical means of memory masking. Nothing is a bigger cop-out than having some Mage remove all the memories of the trauma so as not to change the character in any way after the trauma has gained sufficient attention/babying.

And for fuck's sake, don't make the change overnight, or this life-shattering event treated as if it never happened once the character has worked through it. One of the worst quotes I ever saw in the White Wolf Chats was (said in total seriousness), "Remember my shattered psyche? I'm all better now."

8. And at least have the trauma happen to DIFFERENT characters each time! A player has only so much patience when one of their character's friends is beaten, raped, molested, killed, come back from the dead, killed again, come back again, or wails while these things happen to their significant other.

9. Don't roll dice to see if your character gets pregnant, diseased or dies. Don't "ask the audience" either. If you don't want it to happen to your character, then don't let it (see points #3 and #4). Keeping it real and keeping it sane are two very different things. When a story or character would be screwed up by "realism", ESPECIALLY in an RPG, a good StoryTeller will sacrifice that realism for the sake of the story. A good player knows when to do the same regarding his/her character.

10. I'm not saying that online games have to be shiny-happy either. Angst is good. Angst can be cathartic to play out among characters and is good for character development. Angst for no other reason than to cater to a player's ego or desire for attention has no place in the public chats.

For those who might say, "If you don't like it, ignore it," I won't. Just as my voice among others stopped someone else from running an I-was-raped-pity-me!!11! story for her character (when the player didn't care about the horror of rape and just wanted to be the center of attention AGAIN), I will protest till I'm blue in the face.

For those who might say, "React IC to it if you don't like it," I won't do that either. That attitude encourages things like this: "OOC: If you don't like the fact that my HITMark found the Freehold, react IC to it or you're the one who's twinking. IC: *readies the Primium warhead*". I'm not going to stand for it, and neither should anyone who sees a situation that so obviously violates settings/characters/concepts.

*pant, pant...steps off her soapbox and dusts off her pants* Whew. That was cathartic. There will be one or two more before I'm all done :)

tanya