There’s nothing worse than having someone come in and breaking this because they feel it’s their right to espouse their sick fetishism or other into the group.

After reading and listening to stories of bad sessions of Tabletop role-playing games (TTRPG for short), for some reason many of them boils down to a common trait where either a player or the GM shoves some sort of sexual fetish in the faces of the others around the table. It seems like way too many use the game and table as an excuse to unleash deviance worthy of a Slaaneshi cult (remember that Slaanesh is about excess in anything, not necessarily of the sexual kind). Anything from yiffing to hentackle lolis and anything in between has become some weird flex-like behavior among some that it just taints anything it touches.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting old or what, but I can’t recall that stuff like this was prevalent during my early days getting into and playing ttrpg’s. Sure, there was the occasional lusty vampire player. But not even they went to the lengths of debauchery that plagues the hobby nowadays. For all it was back then, there was no shying away from explicit themes and actions, but somehow it never left a foul stain on the mind when the game was over. Never was there any conflict either over it either. Though with that said, this is my experience. I’m sure that some group, somewhere might have had issues with stuff like this even way back when. But my point is that it wasn’t so much that it became it’s own sphere of collected stories. Even if the internet was in its more bare bones state during that period of time I’m thinking of, it was still the internet and forums and chat rooms did have their share of deviance for sure. Though it tended to stay there, in those forums and chat rooms where the people knew what they were getting into, except for the occasional poor soul that stumbled upon those hives only to get scarred for the rest of their lives.

This makes me wonder if there might be some correlation to the fact that the old gatekeepers where removed. So just as with those that come to inject identity politics, the extreme deviants also moved in to take root in the TTRPG community. So it makes me wonder if it could’ve been avoided or if it was just a question of time anyway before we’d have to deal with these people. Whatever the answer, it’s still won’t change the problems of today. For it is a problem to be sure, in my honest opinion. Now, I’m not going to impede on how people want to play their games, if the group as a whole is a-ok with these things, then go ahead and do your thing. No, my problem lies in the issue that individuals think they can slap this shit in the faces of the other members and believe it’s some weird right they have to do it as well. As I have been mostly GM-ing during my time with TTRPG’s, I’ve at most had to deal with the occasional odd player that either took things way to serious or that on the opposite didn’t respect the game and fellow players at all. Both can be very annoying. But what it comes down to is that what I set as a ground rule for my table is that people are there to have fun, to have some escapism from the sometimes brutal reality that this world can be. So that group needs to have an understanding and a connection that everyone can get into, a bit of give and take maybe but in the end there needs to be an internal harmony. There’s nothing worse than having someone come in and breaking this because they feel it’s their right to espouse their sick fetishism or other into the group. Also it is of really bad taste as a GM to flaunt the same in the faces of the players. Again, this is not to crap on groups that have an agreement to the theme, this is a slap to the entitled person that breaks a group or tries to lord as a GM.

There is a hard line to what constitutes agreed premises and entitled shit-flinging. In the end it’s the group that needs to set the boundaries to what they expect from the game and from a GM’s perspective, I think it’s important to discuss with the players when more deviating themes are to come into play. I’m not one to shy from adult themes, on the contrary I find them really fun to incorporate into the games. The only thing I do have as a requirement is that it is in “good taste”, meaning that it can be blood, guts and sexual content galore, but there will be no fetishizing at my table (yes, I kink shame, deal with it). Play mature, deal with it as a mature.

As a closing I’ll just say that you can have your tastes and preferences, no problem. As long as you don’t shove it in others faces and it doesn’t involve non-consenting.