Are there any setting no nos?

[Wannabe writer]

Is there anything that we could consider a no no in our gaming? I remember in the 90s when sex and homosexuality were banned from an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game and a Vamp the masquerade (ironically).

Today I think the Gaming community has matured... somewhat but are there still Taboo?

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Good Question.

I do not believe there are any untouchable topics. However, there are ones that might be untenable, or uncomfortable.

Grey Ranks is about child soldiers in the Warsaw Ghetto, Monsterhearts covers vampire romances, (and has some LBGT stuff from what I've read). Maid RPG is about anime style "harem comedies" (like Tenchi Myuo). All of these are from fairly small imprints seeking niche games, and would not necessarily gain wide spread distribution thrush traditional channels, but the internet and crowd funding opens up new means. A standard book shop would not have them on the shelves, and even a comic shop might worry about inventory just sitting around.

I had a GM who warned us not to get characters in romantic relationships, as that is the players effectively having sex with his imagination. (His term was more - colorful - but I keep my comment PG-13.) Certain themes or crimes might make players uncomfortable.

RPGs can be a good way to explore strange times, or odd aspects of psychology. As the joke goes, "killing a thousand orcs by shattering the dam and sweeping them away in the flood is heroic. Killing one thousand orcs by drowning them in the sea individually is an alignment check." From our point of view as larger than life heroes in a game, this is acceptable, but trying to wiping out goblins in D&D to the dehumanization that made the Rwandan genocide possible is a strange line.

Games can be art, and can look at deep issues. But games can be games as well. The social function of bringing friends together and escaping the terrors of the real world for a short while should probably come before and attempt to explore those terrors, unless everyone agrees beforehand.

[vulpinoid]

I have to agree.

It all depends on how wide you want the game's audience to be.

Vanilla fantasy gets the widest audience (especially when it doesn't have anything quirky about it that might turn people off)...but that doesn't make for interesting games.

[Anastylos]

I don't think that there are no nos. Maybe not everyone wants to play a Nazi in a concentration camp killing jews or a child soldier in africa, but maybe some players want to play that. For me it would be a no no, but if anyone wants to...
I dont like torture and stuff but others like it because it makes the world grimm and gritty. In the USA there might be problems about sexuality in rpgs, in germany it might be a problem if there a nazis in an rpg but I don't think there is a general no no.

[Wannabe writer]

I think the group is important, I have been in groups where sexuality was a no no, yet in others it was welcomed as part of the character. There are things that offend some and attract others - Palladium books is a great example. Palladium has currently one of the worst mechanical systems out there yet attracts players like flies to a carcass, even something as fundamental as game playability and mechanics can be a turn on and a turn off for many players. I guess acts like bestiality and gratuitous rape and massacre serving no story at all would make it to the top of peoples list, that and F.A.T.A.L.