1KM1KT Free RPG Community

Most games are about having fun and escaping from the real world, so even if gruesome elements are present, like in horror games, players make sure it's "only a game". Sometimes subjects are approached in a tounge-in-cheek or pulp manner, e.g. Nazism. But a distance is always kept. Is it possible to tackle a serious issue, such as child abuse, rape, mass murder, insanity, illness, religion in a role-playing game?

Of course, obviously, it all depends on the mindset of the given players. They have to know each other to a certain extent, because you wouldn't start telling stories about children getting raped to an almost stranger on a convention. Also, somebody might be personally offended by certain themes.

I have some experience playing games like Kult, which encourage introducing dark and awful themes and build games around them, but sometimes these games (due to the release in the 90's, maybe) are over-the-top. I'm not talking about gore or brutality for brutality's sake.

What's your take? I know I'm answering my own question here ("it all depends on the players"), but I'd be really interested in actual examples. Any experiences running serious games? Lots of games opt for deep psychological explorations, but how many players are actually ready to do that?

A game can be about anything! the true problem I find is the type of people that want to get into darker element are not the ones who understand what dark is. there are exeption but they tend to be more the gm's that understand then the players. Look at most gamers, there young. By the time they reach old fart stage, like me (old for a gamer seems to be 25+) they are either nolonger trying to play or have become stuck in a fav game.

now I don't aply this to 1km1kt, being that we are into non-standerd gaming conventions...like free rpgs, we tend to be out side the mold.

I still say its worth making, but keep in mind any thing can and will be perverted. I have seen far to many serius rpgs turn into giggling comedies play both player and gms....


just my 1.99 cents

I always like introducing social issues. It's a great way to make players double-take. For instance, show someone in my Shadowrun group a Humanis Policlub member and they'll blow them away (well, they are all pointy-eared except for the shapeshifter), but a troll is always up to trouble in their minds.

That said, I've seen several games built pretty much to raise issues (links for clarity):

Eclipse Phase deals with transhumanity, sexuality, religion (to a small extent), and social issues. ()
Triune has a look at religion and the importance of religious freedom, especially if it were literally dangerous. ()
Battletech and MechWarrior look at genetic manipulation and eugenics. (link omitted due to popularity)
Corporation covers some ethical issues with megacorporate entities and science going too far. ()
Shadowrun and a lot of other games deal with racism, but that's maybe too obvious. (link omitted again)
If I recall correctly Heavy Gear had stuff about religion and genetic engineering, but I was more looking at the pictures and trying to figure out its system. ()
Rapture: End of Days handles religion in a science-fiction setting, though I don't recall terribly well how it goes. ()
SLA Industries comes dangerously close to the "Gore for gore's sake" side of things, but handles several of the horrors inside with a dead cold tone. If you go for The Truth or whatever the backstory is told there's a whole other mindscrew as well. ()

That's the best dump of stuff I can come up with. It's been a while since I've touched most of these and I often react differently to stuff compared to average people, being oddly desensitized and horribly sensitive depending on how things strike me and the language used, so some of these may be off by a bit.

There is no shortage of games grounded in fairly serious issues. However, as you mentioned - keeping players grounded in the serious issues is a difficult proposal.

"Grey Ranks" takes place during the Warsaw Uprising, and involves teenage freedom fighters choosing between their personal dreams and the success of the mission. "Twilight 2000" is more a simulation of living in a post World War Three environment than a game with detailed rules for finding food and refining fuel. "Cybergeneration" is children fighting against a corrupt government that is using the threat of a plague to instill martial law. "Dragonraid" is about proselyting gospel and saving people, as is "Dogs in the Vineyard" to some extent. I've been shooting to make the "Anarchy Zones" far more than just zombies and survivalists stuck in a mall.

War Games can be accurate conflict simulations that can show the limits of communication, the effect of terrain, the odds and difficulty of historical battles, and where history could have taken a dramatic turn. However, it is also a competition and a chance to show your personal prowess and command skill, and the pieces aren't real people. There is a reason why rule sets that portray the eastern front of WWII and nihilistic settings like Warhammer 40,000 are so popular in conflict simulations - everyone is evil, so there no one to root for and you can kill everything without feeling bad.

Name dropping Plato and Aristotle and their arguments about aesthetics - are games a filtered reflection, or too far removed from the ideal to be useful. (I tend towards games/art has a valuable use)

The problem is, you need to be a good GM to handle things maturely, and have players who can stay on topic, and are comfortable with the subject matter, and some capacity to empathize. Although there are games with sanity and morality meters (Call of Cthlulu, Unknown Armies, World of Darkness) - a revulsion meter or rules for handling society like this are pretty hard to create.

Back when I was playing Rifts in high school, I'd get into arguments with my friends about the role of a political entity known as the "Coalition States". From the 1984 levels of observation, keeping most of the populace illiterate, a dictator that idolized Hitler, and armor that looked like skeletons - the game's author did everything to paint the CS as the bad guys. Yet, in the context of a world where magic exits, demons emerge from rips in the fabric of space, psychics can read minds, mages incinerate robots, and vampires are puppets of Lovecraftian entities - the CS may represent the last hope for a human society in North America. This didn't come through in the actual play much, but we did discuss it afterward.

In college there were some serious moments in the Orpheus game I took part in. At least once my character comforted a grieving mother to help un-tether the ghost of her son. I did well enough (and disappeared just after - my character was a will-o-wisp) she was convinced the visit had been by an angel.

There is a free game called "Executive Decision" that my friends and I downloaded and had a blast playing.

Its sort of like "how to host a murder mystery", except that you are playing cabinet advisors to the president of the USA, and there is some type of crisis unfolding. Each cabinet advisor has one goal that everyone is aware of, and one or two "secret" goals that they can choose to reveal, or even lie about. The goal is to persuade the PoTUSA and the other advisors to follow a course of action that will advance your goals.
The game comes with several pre-packaged crisis. A game takes about an hour and 15 minutes... and there is a timeline, the game plays in real-time.

Event: 0 minutes in: Americans have been taken hostage in Iran. (it explains who the hostages are, perhaps a diplomat and his family or something)
15 minutes in: The kidnappers demand a release of 4 specific detainees from guantanamo bay
30 minutes in: (everyone is provided with dossiers of the detainees)
45 minutes in: One of the hostages is executed, more information is provided about the kidnappers (where they are, how many...) Also, some information is provided about Mossad agents ready to move on a nuclear facility at the same time.
60 minutes in: Final statements: everyone has a chance to convince the PoTUS to take a some sort of action... some potential actions are suggested... from giving in to demands, to making counter demands, delaying, or sending in Seal team 6.
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Personally, I am not interested in the really "dark" games like nicotine girls... that's just not my idea of fun.

Conflicts in Africa --or Middle East, or Central America, wouldn't be so different from other settings with an authoritarian regimen, like an intergalactic empire or feudal lords. But transporting it to the real world might carry some questions. Are revolutionists and their methods the right choice? What make them different from the current regimen? and so on. It doesn't mean it's a bad thing, but if players have different political opinions, conflict may arise.

(I would choose the zulu wars)

If you want a depressing book, look up "Shake Hands with the Devil" by Romeo Dallaire. General Dallaire was the commanding officer of the UN mission in Rawanda that that all but failed to protect anyone during the 1994 genocide. The title refers to an event during the months of killings where he attends a government meeting, which involves contact with the minister behind the slaughter. Dallaire points out that he had to remove the magazine from his pistol so he didn't give in to the urge to simply shoot the man - after all, that wouldn't really stop anything or help the UN. I probably would've needed to do the same thing in his position.

Its not often that I need to put a book down every few dozen pages - but yeah, that book just gets to you. Another thing I noticed is how much I rooted for the UN to just shoot the genociders, even if that would have been a violation of their mission, international/local law etc. I'm not sure if its the influence of movies, or just the desire to see a quick solution. Intellectually, I know that wouldn't have helped.

So the idea is to make a game where violence isn't the answer, can't be the answer.

From the Web show "Extra Credits" (Well worth looking into their archives) comes a discussion of a game done totally wrong - "". It is racist, gets facts wrong, never puts the player in a place to understand the problems, or offer real solutions.

It is all in how you approach the setting.

The African conflicts were ugly affairs . Its hard to tell if the superpowers made things worse through actions to covertly help certain sides, or inaction to help others. But events like the second congo war were almost as big as WWII, but its sadly not mentioned in most school text books. Its hard to tell people these days - you need to be concerned about a war in the middle of nowhere 20 years ago - but a game is could very well be a way to broach the topic.

Perhaps what we need is systems that link players or have them as part of a community, so they have to look for more than just themselves/the quick answer for them.

(from skotos.net) deals with serious issues and John Nash Game Theory (ie economics and nuclear deterrence, not GNS) - tragedy of the commons, defecting characters, and so forth. Some of those articles might have good info about tying fates together to make it more than one individual winning.

I'd say this would be an awesome way to conduct a history class. Put half a class on one side of the conflict, the other half on the other. Give them the situation only from their sides point of view, let them play it out. See what decisions they make and then give the historical events.

The biggest problem would be the parent's reaction to their children's actions and the possibility of real mental trauma. In a public school it would be really hard to get this to fly. I wonder if an History RPG club could have consent forms and operate only semi-officially. I still don't know if that would be enough to stave off lawyers and angry parents.