Steve and Zack at something awful have a review of some kickstarter for a 3rd Edition of Exalted. They seem pretty angry about the direction Exalted has taken. I played Exalted briefly and really liked it, as well as its over-the-top anime-D&D cross-over style. I didn’t realize it was full of rape magic … is this a new thing? Has Exalted changed, or was it always dubious in this way?
I previously reviewed the 2nd edition of Carcosa positively, and my main reason for being accepting of the child rape and sacrifice in that book was that I thought the tone and context made it clear that it was evil, and that the players could take sides on the issue – it was built into the world but not essential to the construction of characters – if anything, people would make characters who would be fighting against the sorcerers who engage this stuff. From reading the Exalted review, it appears that the opposite situation will apply in the new edition of Exalted – that the morality of the succubus is not clearly evil, and it may be hard for players to avoid engaging with magic that really should be NPC-only stuff. Zack in the review was particularly angry about the demon child rape shown in the page of the review, and it certainly seems like the tone and style of depiction there is very different to the calm, cold, matter-of-fact description of sacrifice in Carcosa … it’s more salacious, as if it contains a shred of approval. It’s interesting how context and tone can shape our interpretation of elements of a story that might otherwise superficially appear to be the same. If so, perhaps everyone’s interpretation of context is unique and the 3280 “little idiots” who supported the Exalted kickstarter would have found Carcosa terribly offensive. Do we have some objective barometer for this stuff?
Also, has anyone reading this blog actually ever tried playing an RPG full of sex powers and rape? Given the game scene consists mostly of men, it seems like this would be a very awkward scene. Also, describing combat would be a weird mixture of embarrassing and disturbing, like watching The Human Centipede with your mother. And how would you design adventures? I just can’t see this style of gaming having much appeal to 99.9% of the gaming world. Is it a common feature of White Wolf that its players enjoy getting together and talking really graphically about sex, with dice?
Footnote: the title of this post is taken from the Something Awful review.
Compromise and Conceit 
June 10, 2013 at 7:32 pm
I’m sure you’re unsurprised to hear that I back it.
There are varying levels of wrongness present through Exalted. It can help to break down the types of irritation the linked SA article talks of into:
1. Ghost rape
2. Book of Swallowed Darkness
3. Demon child rape
4. Bikini witches in general
Running down these:
Ghost Rape: This is the one mentioned on the page 1 of the SA article. It’s actually about the same character as described on page 5. In both cases, I think the problem is the same. The game wants to emulate haunting, ghostly sexuality that is irresistible but horrible. Examples that I think its aiming for are Dracula, Dracula’s brides, ghost women that look beautiful till you try to touch them then turn into desiccated corpses, etc. The target should be pulled in by a ghostly honey trap that bait and switches to DEATH! The problem comes from trying to put this into a game because 1) the line between seduction and rape is really fine when talking about seduction by a character that no one in their right mind wants to sleep with [1]; and 2) these things are written as powers that players actually get to use (so some asshole will play it as rape).
So for a rape happy idiot the love me ability is always going to be a bang me on the first date ability. And the fact that sex is mentioned in the power will make a readers mind vastly more like to think of that possibility than say Charm Person [2].
Book of Swallowed Darkness: This is about 20 disjointed pages that purports to be sections of a larger book of supplementary rules for Exalted. Parts from this book provides pages 7, 8 and 9 of the SA article. The original was produced as an April Fool’s day joke, which lead to fan demand for a real such book. Even the “real” version is still a disjointed joke text. The “real” version has charms that are a mix of funny, icky, silly and potentially in game useful. The pictures are even more explicit than most Exalted pictures, which heightens an existing problem (see Bikini Witches below).
Demon child rape: Page 10 of the SA article shows a picture that it says show “a comic of a child with demon vaginas on her body”. I’d previously thought it was sore/bleeding, but looking now I think they are right. There is one. Certainly the accompanying chapter (Chapter One of Infernals) attempts to be shocking and confronting. It’s mostly a car crash of a chapter. I can’t attempt any defence of this chapter or this comic. They really are that bad. The best that can be said is that (I believe) it only appears in this chapter and it widely reviled on the Exalted forums. But fair point, this is shit and if the upcoming edition doesn’t dial back the kiddy rape it’s sick. It is welcome to keep the body horror that this chapter also has, but I’d suggest sheering away any mention of sex in any chapter focused on body horror. [3]
Bikini Witches: This is a term used by an Exalted writer that has moderately widespread usage in the Exalted forums: http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=61969 It reflected an awareness by the writing staff that the art had shifted from its early 1st edition focus on competent female characters in an anime style to the standard sort of cheesecake that is usually used in fantasy RPGs [5]. This covers pages 2, 3, 4 and 6 of the SA article. The game frequently takes a feminist view point, to the extent of having the dominant world power being a matriarchal society ruled by a (Mary Sue [6]) uber-female. But the art often doesn’t achieve the same standard of examining our societal norms through contrast with a fantasy society.
Given that the current crop of writers have been a major influence on identifying and calling out the trend, hopefully it’ll work out better this edition. The art in editions to date sometimes manages to sexualise/objectify men, just ignore sexuality all together or simply show women as power characters who don’t need to trade on sex, but I’d agree that all of these could happen much more frequently. I gather that the writers (and now developers) would like to see more art like that in order to provide a balanced view.
There is a related topic of whether showing beefcake offsets cheesecake. I tend to view that it does, as long as both aren’t omnipresent. Having an occasional objectified guy is probably better for highlighting attitudes than just never having cheesecake/fanservice and I’d prefer a discussion to an edict banning it, because this is a roleplaying game and each group should be able to determine what sort of stories they want to tell and what philosophical points that story makes. Assuming they’re not just killing shit and taking its treasure, in which case my advice is “Enjoy your teenage years”.
Ultimately, yeah Exalted could do a better job of depicting women. The complaints levelled against RPGs in general apply to it too. In all cases, I’d suggest its more prevalent in the art than the writing, but it’s all the same book.
[1] I find the movie Corpse Bride to be really icky. If a corpse claimed I was engaged to it I’d seek someone who could do radiant damage [4e].
[2] I’ve actually never considered how Charm Person can be used as a date rape spell. It’s not something I’ve ever wanted to emulate in a heroic fantasy emulation. But I can see now… Thanks SA.
[3] Actually, I think there is a type of character that consists of dead body parts sewn together. That’s a type of body horror [4] and a discussion on sex would be appropriate in that context. But keep kids out of it.
[4] In case anyone doesn’t get what I mean by body horror, look at TVTropes: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BodyHorror
[5] The worst example isn’t actually shown in the SA article, but on forums is frequently referenced in forums in an embarrassed tone: http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2wecj0m&s=5 and you can see why.
[6] I can’t say I like the character as she effectively robs that society of a lot of the coolness it could show by putting it totally under her thumb.
June 14, 2013 at 2:09 pm
I should also add that in the game we played, you may remember the social combat system (Martin and the evil princess took a couple of shots at each other trying to convince the other person to swap sides).
That system in 2nd edition is a useful and interesting sub-system that allows characters (including PCs) to change other people’s feelings and actions in a more nuanced style than the the D&D Diplomacy skill. The downsides are:
1. It does sacrifice some player control of their character in return for getting mind magic that does something
2. If you’re a sick bastard, you can use it to mind fuck other characters [1]
3. Its actual implementation details result in just attacking every moving thing on sight a valid solution to avoiding being social-fu’d [2]
The stuff that’s stirred up the latest controversy about Ghost Rape appears to be an outgrowth of whatever is replacing this social system. The only information I trust about the replacement is that they’re trying to break away from point 3 (combat trumps talking).
[1] There is actually some streams of thought on forums that regards all powers that interact with the system as mind fucking another character and more horrific (for some reason) than just holding a 6 foot knife to that persons throat.
[2] “The merchant asks you to look at his goods” “I attack him when he opens his mouth! If he rolled well I could be forced to use Willpower points to resist! You know I do this whenever someone tries to talk to me!”
June 16, 2013 at 12:01 pm
Warhammer also has a social combat system. I don’t use it (nor do I know how to- it doesn’t seem to be in the rules). I think a simple solution to fixing the social combat rules is to simply drop them.
I have never been in a game where any of hte players seriously considered raping anyone for any reason (as far as I can recall). I think the creepiness of it is nicely described by a comment on this post at Your Dungeon is Suck:
June 17, 2013 at 10:55 am
“Are they good looking people? Cause if they are fairly young and fairly hot I think I could get behind the concept a little more. “
Presumably, if they were good looking, at least some of them would be female [1]. In that case it’d just become a different type of creepy and uncomfortable.
[1] Though preferences obviously vary.