(no subject)
Hmmmm
I'm not sure exactly how I want to say what I want to say. I guess I'll start by describing what happened today. I'm not mad about it, or upset, but it is still on my mind and I feel like talking about it.
So, I've been playing Avatar (The Last Airbender) DnD lately. It's pretty fun, I've been having a good time. One thing I've noticed about a lot of the people I'm playing with is that they tend to play characters a little closer to the evil side of the spectrum. That's not really something I've ever been able to do, nor wanted to do. But I can accept that other people enjoy it. One character in particular, though, is a batshit psychotic nutcase, and the player readily admits this. He was I guess driven insane by the Fire Nation, and now the guy doesn't see what's wrong with murder, and has absolutely no issues with horrible crimes against humanity. He's threatened our Firebender party member on multiple occasions. It's made me uncomfortable for the last few sessions, how much of a joke they make out of his murderous psychosis, but I didn't want to ruin anyone's pretendy funtimes.
Today, though, things came to a head when, after taking out some pirates in a cave (a couple were killed in the heat of battle, sure), the rest of us continue to explore the cave, but because Mr. Crazy is both annoying and slightly drunk, nobody really wants to stay behind and keep an eye on him. While we're all off, he decides to wake up an unconscious pirate, and start torturing the guy for information. Including cutting off his arms, cutting open his leg, removing the femur, and whittling the bone into a blade. ("I have a Butcher skill, I'm going to use it!")
At this point, I finally figure I can't handle much more of this and finally bring up to the table that I'm not comfortable with this level of crazy batshit. I don't find gore funny. I don't find it entertaining. I don't think murder for the sake of "Well he's crazy" to be particularly amusing. It's the same thing in me that doesn't get why people really enjoy running over prostitutes in GTO, or burning Sims alive. And people were bringing up, "but I think it's interesting to have such an immoral and psychotic character in the game." I don't disagree that having that sort of thing might be interesting... but I don't want to play alongside it. I don't want to work with it.
Thankfully, everyone was pretty understanding that if I was uncomfortable, that it needed to be toned down, but there then was a big debate over what was to be done about the character. In the end, after talking about it for a little while, we agreed that this stuff wouldn't be described in detail and if the character wanted to really be crazy, he could tell it in notes to the DM and keep it to himself for future reference.
And the thing that really sort of surprised me was how no one else was nearly as disturbed with it as I was. At the most, a couple people agreed, "Yeah, now that you mention it I guess that's a bit much." A couple people couldn't have cared less and would have thought it pretty cool to continue on. And that in itself was really pretty weird for me too.
I'm not sure exactly how I want to say what I want to say. I guess I'll start by describing what happened today. I'm not mad about it, or upset, but it is still on my mind and I feel like talking about it.
So, I've been playing Avatar (The Last Airbender) DnD lately. It's pretty fun, I've been having a good time. One thing I've noticed about a lot of the people I'm playing with is that they tend to play characters a little closer to the evil side of the spectrum. That's not really something I've ever been able to do, nor wanted to do. But I can accept that other people enjoy it. One character in particular, though, is a batshit psychotic nutcase, and the player readily admits this. He was I guess driven insane by the Fire Nation, and now the guy doesn't see what's wrong with murder, and has absolutely no issues with horrible crimes against humanity. He's threatened our Firebender party member on multiple occasions. It's made me uncomfortable for the last few sessions, how much of a joke they make out of his murderous psychosis, but I didn't want to ruin anyone's pretendy funtimes.
Today, though, things came to a head when, after taking out some pirates in a cave (a couple were killed in the heat of battle, sure), the rest of us continue to explore the cave, but because Mr. Crazy is both annoying and slightly drunk, nobody really wants to stay behind and keep an eye on him. While we're all off, he decides to wake up an unconscious pirate, and start torturing the guy for information. Including cutting off his arms, cutting open his leg, removing the femur, and whittling the bone into a blade. ("I have a Butcher skill, I'm going to use it!")
At this point, I finally figure I can't handle much more of this and finally bring up to the table that I'm not comfortable with this level of crazy batshit. I don't find gore funny. I don't find it entertaining. I don't think murder for the sake of "Well he's crazy" to be particularly amusing. It's the same thing in me that doesn't get why people really enjoy running over prostitutes in GTO, or burning Sims alive. And people were bringing up, "but I think it's interesting to have such an immoral and psychotic character in the game." I don't disagree that having that sort of thing might be interesting... but I don't want to play alongside it. I don't want to work with it.
Thankfully, everyone was pretty understanding that if I was uncomfortable, that it needed to be toned down, but there then was a big debate over what was to be done about the character. In the end, after talking about it for a little while, we agreed that this stuff wouldn't be described in detail and if the character wanted to really be crazy, he could tell it in notes to the DM and keep it to himself for future reference.
And the thing that really sort of surprised me was how no one else was nearly as disturbed with it as I was. At the most, a couple people agreed, "Yeah, now that you mention it I guess that's a bit much." A couple people couldn't have cared less and would have thought it pretty cool to continue on. And that in itself was really pretty weird for me too.