I don't know, Probably less than I'd like


That's good practice anyway.

The rule of thumb I had was that game ratings were like American Movie Ratings.

General ones were G rated (possibly PG)

Mature was PG 13

Adult was R, moving into X if the people were agreeable.


For me, it's not about having an excuse to swear or other things, it's all about having the freedom to go where the story takes you.

I just don't usually go there in stories.  When you're over at someone's house or at a convention playing a roleplaying game, you don't start taking your shirt off or describing something that's too graphic... ok, that's not quite true.  Perhaps in the Camarilla we might get a little graphic at times.  Still, though, I've never really been a fan of the Anita Blake stories.

In reply to Genghis the Hutt (msg # 14):

Anita Blake stories are a whole different beast then WoD in my opinion. But I see your point of simply not going there.

See I generally play with people who are close friends precisely so i don't have to worry about things getting uncomfortable if we 'go there'. In-person games we fade to black just because not doing so could lead to orgies and that tends to derail games, but in PbP we go all the way more often than not.

Yeah, I have awesome friends.
This message was last edited by the user at 04:48, Fri 18 Apr 2014.

I've been involved in the adult interlude situation before.  I've taken the fade-to-black option not to avoid adult interactions, but to avoid delaying the game while everyone else waits for the storyline to progress.

If somebody leaves your game because you changed a tag, they obviously weren't very interested in your game and would probably have left anyhow. Let them go. Spend your time making the game fun for those who stay, rather than worrying about those who left. Maybe they'll join your next game.

Yes, I think the Adult tag is used by some people as a sort of club, but I've never seen the need for it. You can use swearing in a Mature game. I'm not a moderator so this is only my interpretation, but I think if you have a few Fs scattered across a page of messages you should be fine, but if you have several per post, then you probably need an Adult tag (or soap and brush...)

Personally, I use gaming to have fun and engage in adventures in worlds I can't visit in reality - history, fantasy, sci-fi, etc. If I want weird sex, there are plenty of places I can go for it IRL, and I reckon I'd have more fun doing it than writing about it. :)

If I have a deep need for depictions of graphic gore, OTOH, I'd probably go see a shrink...

Each to their own, but I can have as much fun watching (and gaming) Errol Flynn as I can Vinnie Jones, and The Woman In Black is just as scary as Saw III, IMO.

I usually make my games Mature, that way we can have some adult references, the odd tasteful bedroom scene and plenty of hack and slash, but I'm not constantly arguing with players who want to turn the game into a cess pool of depravity.

And you think correctly, as indicated in the Mature Game Policy:
         /help/?t=faqs&page=maturepolicy

The Mature rating is just an advisory - like the one you sometimes see on TV shows, "Viewers may find some scenes disturbing."  The TV company warns that the scenes may be disturbing, but they are still able to show those scenes.  If you are having to move content in a Mature rated game to a hidden Group, specifically in order to avoid offending people, then the game needs to be given an Adult rating.

Sounds like my friends and I, love those kinds of groups, but then I'm a fan of if it makes sense for the characters do it, and that includes all sorts of things, so I don't bother with games Less than Adult, unless the plot is something Very, Very Special.

Personally I still find the Adult tag to restrictive here myself, as well.

I'm in the same boat. I always sigh inwardly when I have to skirt around adult subjects or alter natural plot or character development for the sake of staying within those very (IMO) illogical and essentially pointless rules, and while there are other places to play out the kind of gore and sexual situations I like to delve into, none of those places have the sheer functionality and user-friendliness of RPoL. I recently had a player who was upset that I made him quit cyber-stalking someone and was ejected from my game for being creepy report one of my games to the mods for violating the adult policy. the mods were as always thorough enough to actually examine the situation and saw it for what it really was: sour grapes, and not at all what the player in question claimed.

The messed-up part is, I even offered the player several chances to alter course and actually do something relevant to the plot instead of creeping on this one player and all her characters, but he persisted and then insulted me and all of my GM staff, and even sent another message after being removed to continue his insults. The player who was being harassed plays with him in another game as well, and apparently he does the same thing in every game. This is relevant because with a less restrictive adult policy (one that let adults actually do things that are..ya know...adult), I wouldn't have to tiptoe around people who came into a game knowing full well what its content would be and then tries to selectively quote a bunch of unrelated threads to make up an offense when they're told to leave for being truly creepy or just ruining other peopels' fun.

Now that i think about it, that's the one and only thing i'd pay a subscription for: the right to do whatever I damn well please in my games. I don't care about a bigger scratchpad or any of that other stuff being proposed as subscription benefits, but I know for a fact that there's a substantial number of RpoL users who'd pay to not have that Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, especially given how excellent RpoL is except for that one little thing. It's a pain to have to write some of my better stories elsewhere and then import and format logs for the people who want to read them (yes, i get quite a lot of people wanting to read these things), but again - one does what one must.



I disagree. Some types of stories just cannot be told in a general or mature game without dumbing them down so much that the impact is lost. For example, settings like Warhammer 40k, World of Darkness, Call of Cthulu - I can't take those seriously when everything is glossed over, faded to black, or obliquely alluded to.



That's all a matter of opinion. If I'm playing a character who would have a potty mouth, i play them to the hilt as with all characters. Some people inr eal life swear every second or third word, and never having any such characters in a setting where they should realistically exist breaks my sense of immersion badly. I realize that some people are just unable to tolerate those naughty swearwords, and those people are welcome to avoid my games . I always mention in big bold red letters in my RTJ's that offensive language is something you are almost certain to see, because like Steelsmiter i drop the f-bombs frequently, and I don't want to deal with some prude chastising me or trying to make everyone change the way they play to keep from offending them.



All the people I play with would say the same thing in regard to why they play RPG's - the only big difference is that they'd also add sex (not even always 'weird sex') to the list of things things they couldn't do in real life, and as much as it blows your mind, there are a great many people, such as my wife, who enjoy writing sex more than actually doing it in real life.



A 'deep need for depictions of graphic gore' does not mean a person is mentally ill or needs therapy. That's like saying that anyone who writes about going into dungeons and murdering the residents to take their gold and loot wants to do so in real life. And hell, even assuming that was true, there are a great many things that people want to do which they do not act on in any way except through harmless fantasy.



I hate it when people throw out Errol Flynn as the be-all end-all of adventure and swashbuckling tales. It comes up within the first three sentences every time someone needs an example of inoffensive adventure stories. I've seen his films, and i find them dull as dishwater, but then again i'm only 31 and I got my love of fantasy from anime, 90's-era superhero comics, and videogames.

Pure opinion: Scary is a word used by children who don't have better words or ways to differentiate between the different flavors of fear.

Not opinion: Horror comes in many different flavors. The Woman in Black is a thriller. Saw III is a slasher flick (some people call the Saw movies 'torture porn') with elements of a psychological thriller.  They are fundamentally different subsets of the same genre, and cannot be compared on the same criteria just because they're both 'scary'.
This message was last edited by a moderator, as it was inflammatory, at 17:15, Fri 18 Apr 2014.

Man, if other sites had the user functionality of RPoL I would never look back, but the thing is I really got into PBP gaming on RPOL, and no other place seems as natural or easy to use.

Now, I've had all my real friends come here and love it, until the Adult Policy got in the way when they tweaked it a bit, or something some years back, and I've never been able to get into a real game sense.  I've tried the other sites, but without the Rpol system in place, it doesn't feel right.

Without the people, it isn't fun, and the fact that my SO had to quit one of her most favorite games here, has always left a bad taste in my mouth.

The rules concerning acceptable content on this site will not change with subscription.  Those rules were put in place for the protection of what is, after all, a site which can be used by people of all ages.  Just because money will change hands, protection of the site will not become any less important.

Similarly, subscription will not make any user exempt from being subject to moderation, just as they are now.  That includes moderator intervention in games which are not complying with site rules.

I don't think they were implying that that would happen BBR, just that it would be the only thing worth paying money for, to them.

I realise that.  Just wanted to clarify things before anybody else read it and got excited about how they'd heard that a subscription would make them exempt from all site rules.  :)

From the Rpol Adult Games Policy, the following subjects are restricted in Adult Games:

Stories centering on:
crime and gore;
ethnic, religious, or racial intolerance;
sexual assault;
torture;
dehumanizing murder; and/or
the abuse of children.
The Artistic Merit caveat (below) exists to allow some of these materials as non-gratuitous plot and character development devices within game Content.

Games are not allowed to exist -- at all -- which graphically describe:
non-consensual sex, sexual assault, or rape;
the taking of life for sexual arousal;
incest;
bestiality;
necrophilia;
sexual acts involving children under the age of 18, or
the sexual exploitation of minors.

I don’t see these as illogical or pointless, and I agree with the site owners that these are not subjects that anyone should be treating as a game.




So actually you’re agreeing with me - if you were in a game which had an Adult label but ran at a Mature level, you would have left anyway.




Which is what the Adult tag is for. If it serves a purpose for you, it’s there for you to use. I’m not saying the Adult tag should be banned, I’m just saying you can play perfectly good games outside it - you don't need to take your pants off to have fun.



Sadly, you’re right. IMO it should be listed as a Basic Human Right, but unfortunately it isn’t.



Even more sadly, you’re right there, too. However, I’m not one of them.



Hmm, perhaps not, but I’d look on it as a ‘warning indicator’. Non-graphically RPing killing someone in a world or time in which it is a norm is something even our Errol did. However, graphically describing the action of a blade on flesh is, IMO, unnecessary, and I’d be a little... wary of someone who finds it necessary to the point where they can’t enjoy a game without it.



Lol, sorry, I didn’t deliberate over my examples. Certainly his work is dated now, but I doubt if there were graphic descriptions of sexual acrobatics, gore and barrack-room language in your 90s superhero comics either, yet by your own admission you enjoyed those. By all means substitute Spiderman for Mr Flynn if you wish. :)



Certainly there are different types of horror. Some of them are beyond the scope of this site altogether, others can be depicted within a Mature game by a skillful writer.

All I’m saying is you don’t need an Adult tag to have a good time. Rejecting games out of hand just because they don’t have an Adult tag is another form of restriction - a self-imposed one.
This message was last edited by the user at 20:31, Fri 18 Apr 2014.

Stories centering on:
crime and gore;
ethnic, religious, or racial intolerance;
sexual assault;
torture;
dehumanizing murder; and/or
the abuse of children.
The Artistic Merit caveat (below) exists to allow some of these materials as non-gratuitous plot and character development devices within game Content.

Games are not allowed to exist -- at all -- which graphically describe:
non-consensual sex, sexual assault, or rape;
the taking of life for sexual arousal;
incest;
bestiality;
necrophilia;
sexual acts involving children under the age of 18, or
the sexual exploitation of minors.

Let's take those one by one -

Crime and gore: Eh, this one's a catch-all to cover anything deemed generally uncool by the majority of people. It's actually so vague as to be nearly useless, and reminds me of the U.S. military's Article 134, which is (un)affectionately referred to as the catch-all clause because it's so broad that it basically covers anything you want it to.

Ethnic, religious, or racial intolerance: If someone made a game with this sole purpose or central focus, why join it in the first place or stay if it veers this way? Just like anything else, all you have to do is say 'please remove me', and problem solved. I do see the bigger problem of potentially attracting an unsavory crowd to the site, but with the rules in place they still couldn't push their agenda to the general userbase.

Sexual assault, torture, dehumanizing murder, the taking of life for sexual arousal: Seen whole sites dedicated to all of these and not one of them is a sickening cesspool of depravity. Generally any or all of these when written in a roleplay are more like consensual non-consent anyway, and if a player is truly weirded out they can just leave. It's the beauty of the medium by which we play - you don't have to stick around for something that makes you truly uncomfortable, or have it in your games at all.

Incest: This isn't even a matter of morality, it's just 'it makes a lot of people uncomfortable'. this is one of those touchy subjects where I don't understand why people get all up in arms - if you apply the general rules of 'no sexual acts involving children under the age of 18' it becomes entirely moot, unless you're of the belief that incestuous relationships are always entered into unwillingly or have some element of abuse (not true on either count).

Bestiality: Same as incest. Seen plenty of it on RP sites, and none are cesspools. Another case of 'if you don't like it, leave'. Especially in a fantasy context, i don't see the issue at all.

Necrophilia: Not my particular cup of tea, but i've read it, and it didn't especially horrify me.

sexual acts involving children under the age of 18, or
the sexual exploitation of minors: This one is a no-brainer. It's such a difficult issue that even the most permissive roleplay sites don't allow it, and with good reason. It's always harmful, and far too many people have had negative experiences with it to have it anywhere someone might even accidentally stumble across it.

All in all, most of the disallowed stuff comes down to matters of taste, and the one truly horrifying one is such a no-brainer that its obvious.



Amusingly, I have seen all of these settings except Warhammer (i've only ever been in one game of it, and barely played in that game thus far) with general or mature ratings. I didn't bring it up just to make an argument - i have observed this personally, right here on RpoL.




What's sad about it? I'm genuinely curious. Still, this one is a matter of taste so it makes no difference if i agree or disagree.



It is, but based on my experience it has been a successful one too. And note that I do participate in mature games on a very selective basis.



I wasn't trying to imply that any such change would take place. If I can be said to have a goal with any of this, it's to pull people down from their moral high ground and make them actually ask why they find so many things that are both a part of life and enjoyable for some people to write in fantasy contexts so objectionable that they have to be outright banned even when they can be put in a place where people who don't want to see them don't have to. It comes down to a simple question: is the thing being depicted inherently harmful even when written? For most of the above, the answer is no. Squicky is not the same as inherently harmful. An uncomfortable topic for one person is just another entertaining read for another.

All of those things you say you have seen on other sites, that's very good.  It means that if you want somewhere to RP them, you know where to go for it.  And from what you say, there are plenty of places, so that shouldn't be any hardship for you.

Regardless of your goal, and your opinion of acceptability, the owner and moderators of this site have deemed some content unacceptable for roleplaying on this site.

To quote your own advice, "If you don't like it, leave."
This message was last edited by the user at 21:57, Fri 18 Apr 2014.

Personally, I don't think The Princess Bride or Star Wars: Episodes 4-6 were constrained or needlessly altered to stay within their rating.  Whatever Luke and Leia did on their own, before they found out they were siblings, they did in private.

Also, I really like this site, but full disclosure I'm not planning at this time to be a subscriber when it becomes mandatory to be one to be able to choose to use an adult tag.  When that happens I'd rather not change my gaming style, so I usually choose not to play in games with an adult tag.  I don't think this constrains me very much.  I mean, I'm already blocked from graphically roleplaying a serial killer or what a D&D character is actually doing to foes, so choosing to refrain from graphically describing any boinking going on doesn't seem like much of a hardship.

Not to mention, I very rarely ever see sex in a movie or in a book graphically played out such as to actually advance the plot.  The plot would usually be better served by a "fade to black", so as to avoid the tv trope "Coitus Ensues":

To each their own on the adult aspect of things, some people like having it there like me some don't. Some of you play in games to play in games, for someone like me this place gives me somewhere to write with like minded people and I enjoy having the adult aspect there even if I don't decide to use it I like that it is open to us to have it there.

For me RPOL is a safe place to be able to write adult sexual situations, the games I run or help run do not tend to be there for the sake of sex but welcome it there as part of the plot. I do not like being part of games that would be considered to come down to what people would consider as smut. That bothers me, and anyone joining my games looking for a hookup can turn around and leave. I stay away from those games, and the people who run them. I try to keep my games safe especially for the females who join, so they don't have to deal with certain things that run rampant on other sites which give more freedom to what can be written. I think RPOL has a great balance for the adult part of it, and am glad that they didn't decide to fully wipe it out. I also very much disagree with the Subscription Adult access thing for the site, but I will keep those opinions closed until if and when that comes about.

My main concern reading all of this thread, is for a lot of people they hear adult and they think it is all gore and smutty sex and that isn't the case. Yes there are games out there that can fall into that, but there are also wonderful games which done and you are best to research if you are going to join and adult game. And it isn't a club house like someone else said here, I welcome anyone of the right age who is mature enough to be a part of the game. I am the first one to not be ok with people who cannot handle things maturely, and will get them removed. Even with the rules of RPOL, I have had things come up which I am not comfortable with and I had asked for it to be stopped right there because it wasn't needed. I know of some people who like throwing the "Well it isn't against the rules so I can do it card", and throw it at GM's of the game they are in just to get away with something that makes others uncomfortable. I don't and can't allow that to happen in my game, I am not strict but I don't deal with BS from players either.

So if you chose to bring your game to mature rather then the original Adult that is your own choice. But don't be surprised to lose players because they like the more open feel of the adult setting. It all comes down to personal comfort, and how much you are willing to play to those around you. Another option you might have wanted to try before changing it, is getting the opinions of the players in your game.

I just hope people can see we are not all that bad of people, just because we like to write a bit more intimate scenes in our games and stories on here.

Interestingly, several of the things you mention depend on one’s point of view, and in most of them you seem to take the viewpoint of the perpetrator.

Gory Crime is a much bigger deal for the victim.
Intolerance isn’t much fun for the victim, either.
Rape and Torture is something in which I can’t imagine players wanting to RP the victim either.
Incest amongst consenting adults, admittedly, is less 'severe’. The only ‘victim’ there is the unborn child with congenital defects. However, that in itself is a valid reason to ban it.
Bestiality, again, look at it from the animal’s POV. How is abusing a chimpanzee different from abusing a child?
Necrophilia; nothing wrong from the perpetrator’s POV perhaps, but what about the deceased? Or the deceased’s family?



No, most of the disallowed stuff comes down to non-proliferation of inherently harmful ideas. Saying that it’s ok for a group of torture addicts or bestiality aficionados to RP their predilections online is no different than allowing a group of paedophiles to view kiddy porn online, IMO. “Where’s the harm? The public can’t see it, it’s just for us, right? They can log out if they don’t like it.”


Agreed, but from the above, potentially, the answer is yes. I see no harm in the Adult stuff, but the Prohibited stuff is prohibited correctly IMO. Stuff may happen IRL, but is there any real need to portray it here (or anywhere, for that matter, except with an intent to stamp it out).


There’s nothing sad about it for them if that’s what they enjoy. However, if they prefer writing it to doing it there will be (a good many) occasions when they are writing about it instead of doing it - which is sad for their potential partners, because they then become members of the first group you mentioned, who can’t get their basic human needs...


Likewise, I selectively participate in Adult games.



Precisely.


Me too.


Obviously each game and each GM is different, but the only difference between Mature and Adult ratings is the Adult games allow:
Graphic Sex
Graphic Violence
Graphic Language.
Consequently, I think these aspects will have a natural tendency to dominate an Adult game unless the GM actively fights against it.


I often wish the Powers That Be on this site took that route too, rather than throwing out blanket activity bans that have consequences far beyond what was originally intended. Personally, I’d much rather see “You! Idiot! Stop spamming or you’re out!” than “From now on, nobody can mention any game for any reason in any forum, even to help a fellow gamer.”


Absolutely. I might not want to do it, but I’ll support your right to do it. For Free. (Provided it doesn’t stray to the potentially harmful topics of the Prohibited Material.)

I can understand that.  In my regular job, there are perhaps 60 regular weekday employees, most of whom don't work during our weekend events.  If each year, each person leaves one thing behind before a weekend, that averages out to about one thing being left every weekend of the year, which is kind of a regular pain to get taken care of (every weekend) during the transition from week-day stuff to weekend stuff.  With RPoL, it's probably the same thing -- there are enough people that even a very small percentage would still add up to a big problem.  There are enough people here that if each person put one link once a year, there'd probably be a fair number of links here every day?  That's a lot to police, and then they'd have to track how many links a person was putting and in what context and people would argue and try to push the limits, and it's probably just much easier to just put in a blanket ban.  That being said, I have run afoul of that "no posting links" before.  The last time I did that, which was perhaps three or four years ago, I linked to a game that I thought was an official RPoL forum, but apparently was only an official discussion forum.  C'est la vie. :)

You're probably right, but I would imagine that policing all the decent folk who step on the wrong eggshell takes time, too.

But we're straying off topic.

You would imagine wrong, I'm afraid.  When we moderate a post we always leave an explanation, and it's definitely much quicker to deal with a larger number of posts and say, "Here's why your post was moderated." than it is to deal with a smaller number and say, "Here's why your post was moderated." then read the response, then explain that, "Yes, it's a problem today, but it wasn't yesterday when he did the exact same thing, because... ", then deal with the complaints about uneven moderating and favouritism.

"The same rules apply to every site user." is much simpler for everybody concerned.

Incidentally, if anybody ever wondered why we have the rules we do (and, in general, it's because somebody went out of their way to show that we needed them to keep things fair for the vast majority of users), you can find more information here: /help/?t=faqs&page=Rules+Background
This message was last edited by the user at 11:34, Sun 20 Apr 2014.

I use the Adult tag for a reason.

Just in case. I don't want to have my ass in a sling. I toe the line as a rule but once in awhile there is a grey area between M and A. Just go adult, obey the ToU and if you want off the hook kink, use google.

I know, in the case of the one major policy change that has taken place since I started here, they tried going the "Stop it or else" route, first...but the problem was widespread enough that they would have ended up banning a few dozen users...which would have disrupted dozens or even hundreds of games that they participate in or run.

So, they just said, "Since you can't all play nice on this subject, you don't get to play at all."  It disrupted maybe four or five forums, at the most, and only one, significantly, and it didn't result in anyone's game being arbitrarily shut down because the GM was banned (there were probably a few that died because the GMs chose to leave the site in protest.)

Most of the site restrictions arose because of repeated incidents of significant numbers of users abusing a lack of such policies, or exploiting loopholes, and failing to take the 'Now, play nice, kids' warnings seriously.

With regards to Adult standards and how they impact game-play on the site...the vast majority of Adult games in which I've participated have been, largely, no different from my perspective than the Mature games.  Setting an Adult flag is an insurance policy...if the GM feels the need for a little extra detail in a potentially gory scene (like making a supernatural murder a little extra horrific), they have the option.  If the players decide they actually want to play out that romantic encounter between two characters, they have the option.  But the games don't revolve around Adult-level content.  Several of the Mature games I'm in have military settings, and as a result, there's a fair amount of swearing (as soldiers, especially in high-stress combat situations, tend to be pretty uninhibited with their language)--but the focus is more on telling the story than on displaying the players' mastery of profanity.  The stories don't feel watered down or anemic as a result...if you've got a good story to tell, it can be told enjoyably without having to get all graphic.

Some people prefer graphic...and that's fine, more power to them.  But a lot of the 'pro-graphic content' commentary here seems to be implying that if you don't have a taste for that, you're somehow not telling the story as completely as you could be.  Most of the people I know are not that graphic...even the military/ex-military ones...so the Mature-level characters that I play are accurate to the world in which I live, and they tell the story I want to tell.