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Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 12, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Is anyone familiar with the history of the TTRPG safety toolkit? http://bit.ly/ttrpgsafetytoolkit / https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/114jRmhzBpdqkAlhmveis0nmW73qkAZCj

I only learned about it yesterday and I'm afraid to think what kind of taboo content people that have created this include in their sessions.

I haven't done much TTRPG playing, but my youngest brother has a regular session and has DM'd frequently, and he's shared some stories/gripes over the years. Mostly, it's just been players thinking they're funnier than they really are, and doing stupid things for the lulz, or refusing to let go of a stupid running gag (the Shadowrun campaign derailed by crotch itch).

But to the extent there's been fairly blatant "magical realm" behavior in his group — and it's been thankfully few, but multiple, occasions — it's consistently taken the form of "I'm going to send my female character alone, under-armed, into that cave with the band of male goblins/orcs. Gee, I sure hope nothing bad happens to her…" And when called on it, the players in question have offered the same defense each time: how dare you accuse her of that sort of behavior, when that's something only guys do.

Yes, in my brother's experience, every time it's been a female player [edit: seeing how this is ambiguously phrased, I mean it wasn't always the same female player in each incident] engaging in this manner, and every time she insists that, as a girl, her actions are always pure, and that no matter that she consistently plays her character like Darkness from KonoSuba, any hint of sexual connotation is all just in your dirty male head, then spends the rest of the session in a pout because the group wouldn't play along with her fantasy while also providing the plausible deniability that it's not her fantasy, it's only just because of those sexist male players that her character was overpowered… and violated… and… [heavy breathing]…

Someone gotta tell that woman about online erotic roleplay.

that woman

I see how my phrasing was unclear. We're talking more than one female player here, across different incidents.