baron
Clueless newb
Posts: 97
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Post by baron on Sept 6, 2024 15:02:20 GMT -5
Gross. I mean, ERP was skeevy enough to me, but honest to Christ until just now it didn't occur to me that the average participant would be physically jerking it while typing with the other hand.
God I'm so glad I'm done with this shitty game.
Consenting adults can do what they like. That said, the flaming logo on the homepage should read, "WARNING: weird old internet dudes are beating off while they play this. This is the normal and expected way to play the game." Truth in fucking advertising. It's bait and switch otherwise.
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Post by gringoose on Sept 6, 2024 17:53:13 GMT -5
There's a lot of people that are into smut for different reasons. Some people passively read smut and others write it collaboratively and the number of people that either consume or participate in smut is much larger than the entire MUD community. Some of these communities have thousands of active daily users. There's a new phenomenon of people doing smut with AI now too. You don't have to like it but it is what it is.
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mehtastic
GDB Superstar
Armers Anonymous sponsor
Posts: 1,597
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Post by mehtastic on Sept 6, 2024 20:41:37 GMT -5
There's nothing inherently wrong with ERP or erotica. I think people who are annoyed with it in Armageddon specifically, are annoyed because it's not the correct place for it. It's like the difference between having sex in a bedroom and having sex in the middle of a LARP game.
There are also undoubtedly people who get a rise out of that aspect. It wasn't all that long ago that Reddit reviews painted Armageddon as a place for unwanted exhibitionism RP and I would be shocked if that still isn't happening in-game.
For better or worse, it's never going to go away from Arm. It would lose so many players if ERP was further restricted, and it would gain so many players if it leaned into ERP and started selling sex toys in the starter shops. People who want Armageddon for the bone sword simulator aspect really do not want the status of ERP to change, even if they think they do.
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Post by blahblahblah on Sept 6, 2024 21:34:35 GMT -5
Eh, I found this game years back through mudlistings categorizing it as "adult". Generally, I would have considered an adult space one where people what they wanted - ERP, brutally depicted murder, or what have you.. so long as the people involved consent. I wish I had seen one of these threads BEFORE I started playing. Would have saved me a lot of time and irritation. It's another reason to warn people who like that sort of play away. The community as a whole can't stop shooting themselves in the foot.
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baron
Clueless newb
Posts: 97
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Post by baron on Sept 7, 2024 11:27:25 GMT -5
To be clear, Arm can become a fetish ERP-enforced game at this point, with every character required to be a fuck-me with grossly oversized sexual organs, and I will not care (so long as it doesn't go back to allowing "kid" in sdesc, and ain't that fucking skeevy as fuck that it was ever allowed, given that ERP is a load-bearing pillar, apparently).
It can't affect me anymore.
But anyone searching for the game in the future should know that it's erotica with bone swords, not bone swords with the occasional romance subplot. It's like Twitch, individual subs on reddit, and OnlyFans (which didn't used to be porn-exclusive). Once you allow explict erotica on a platform, it takes over the platform, in whole or in part.
I don't have a problem with erotica. I have a problem with absolutely every aspect of entertainment and life being infected by it.
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jesantu
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 364
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Post by jesantu on Sept 7, 2024 22:07:02 GMT -5
I don't have a problem with erotica. I have a problem with absolutely every aspect of entertainment and life being infected by it. Exactly.
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Post by catacost on Sept 8, 2024 0:05:42 GMT -5
I haven’t run into any of it in the past 2 months as a new player. Just people talking about it on forums.
It must occur but it’s clearly not in plain sight.
All the RP I’ve encountered has been bone sword mystical desert wasteland and mercantile content.
My gut tells me people trump it up a lot for their own reasons. e.g. They have a seething hate for the game and want to detract others from it.
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Post by Azerbanjani on Sept 8, 2024 0:24:20 GMT -5
I will say it seems to mostly fire off your direction, completely at random, if you play a female PC. Of course maybe you do play a female PC and then you go 'I play a female PC' and I go 'Well shit idk then'.
I've gotten the most erp requests as the following: 1: Someone who is vaguely charismatic/interacts with people like normal humans and DOESN'T want to fuck like rabbits. 2: If I play anyone vaguely feminine.
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Post by catacost on Sept 8, 2024 3:49:18 GMT -5
Ah, that makes plenty of sense in the worst way. I only play males so I’m likely somewhat insulated from the advances due to the demographics.
Well shit. Maybe I’ll try a female PC and round out my experience. I definitely don’t like the idea that I’m blissfully unaware, sitting in a pit of vipers.
I believe it happens but sometimes the way it gets talked about I half expected to stumble over an orgy in the center of town.
… I’m gonna be so sad if I roll up a female and suddenly get dragged off to an orgy…
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baron
Clueless newb
Posts: 97
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Post by baron on Sept 8, 2024 4:50:50 GMT -5
Tribal roleplay and noble roleplay is where the ERP was concentrated back when I was playing. I mostly avoided it by mostly avoiding those spheres.
If you play a female, make her as ugly and unappealing as possible, is my advice. Like a grandmotherly dwarf or a half-rotten mutant that slithered out the sewers.
Of course, if you do want the requests and the gifts, create a female with big boobies, human preferred, and petition to become a noble's aide.
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Post by lyse on Sept 8, 2024 13:00:44 GMT -5
This thread is kind of ick. So we’re ok with meta gaming the fuck out of the game, but not pee pees and pu-pus lol give me a break.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with ERP. If you’re playing a person well people are sexual. Maybe people that post here aren’t, but that’s a separate issue. The problem is when it’s a plot mover doing it all the time. It absolutely shouldn’t have any effect on, on going plots. Unless that is the plot, which we all know where that leads. The fact that we have such a divide partially explains why the quality of RP is so two dimensional and bad.
As to creating unattractive characters, that absolutely will not stop someone from pursuing some kind of romance with the character. That’s not even counting sex pests. You could describe your character as shaped like Spongebob and you can be sure someone is into that. And iso clans, well sex is built into a couple of them. Coupled with them largely not involved in most plots and really nothing to do, yeah you’re going to get that.
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Post by jcarter on Sept 8, 2024 14:03:04 GMT -5
This thread is kind of ick. So we’re ok with meta gaming the fuck out of the game, but not pee pees and pu-pus lol give me a break. one is gaming, the other is for sexual gratification. they're not even in the same ballpark. i agree with the first part, and disagree with the second part. ERPing isn't any of my business. but associating a character being 'sexual' or claiming that it comes with the territory of playing a character well is completely untrue. characters, both in roleplaying and in any other media, don't need to be sexual or veer at all into the topic to be a great character or well written. ERP is there for sexual gratification and/or titillation. that's not a judgment or condemnation on it, it's just the reality of the situation. trying to put it into some higher level of roleplaying is nonsense.
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Post by generality on Sept 8, 2024 14:26:18 GMT -5
I think ERP gets used as a tool to garner fondness for a certain character, in some ways it is kind of predatory but giving it that moniker in the Arm environment is risky at best.
Personally, for the reasons I have stated above (assuming everyone on the other side is Shaloonsh) I have a very hard to engaging in the act myself.
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Post by lyse on Sept 8, 2024 15:58:04 GMT -5
This thread is kind of ick. So we’re ok with meta gaming the fuck out of the game, but not pee pees and pu-pus lol give me a break. one is gaming, the other is for sexual gratification. they're not even in the same ballpark. i agree with the first part, and disagree with the second part. ERPing isn't any of my business. but associating a character being 'sexual' or claiming that it comes with the territory of playing a character well is completely untrue. characters, both in roleplaying and in any other media, don't need to be sexual or veer at all into the topic to be a great character or well written. ERP is there for sexual gratification and/or titillation. that's not a judgment or condemnation on it, it's just the reality of the situation. trying to put it into some higher level of roleplaying is nonsense. This thing ate my whole post while I was typing it on my phone and I’m not bothered enough to type it all again. 1) RP is something different than ‘gaming’. We can agree to disagree on that point. 2) if I made it sound like I was equating ERP to a higher form of RP, I wasn’t. All I was saying was the tone of this thread took makes it seem like if you participate in it you’re some kind of weirdo and if you don’t you’re above board. I’m just saying if you avoid being sexual for the sake of it, you are being two dimensional. There’s a reason FTB is a thing, but to chose to do it isn’t strange at all. One of the last times I played in the byn. There were two guys that would beat the shit out of each other sparring and then go fuck. How do I know? Because me and a couple of characters walked in on them. So yeah, in some cases it absolutely does add to RP. That may not do anything for you and that’s cool. It certainly didn’t titillate me, but it sure did tickle me and made a boring, procedural experience more interesting…for me.
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baron
Clueless newb
Posts: 97
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Post by baron on Sept 8, 2024 16:40:39 GMT -5
Romance is a valid narrative, as are less-than-romantic sexual encounters. There's nothing wrong with it. It happens in regular tabletop play. Indeed, it happens in the most public TTRPG table of all: Critical Role.
FTB is an excellent tool for participating in those kinds of plots without accidentally granting gratification to weirdos like Shalooonsh/Nektol. Though I doubt the narrative value of sexuality explict depictions, if consenting adults are having fun with it, who am I to tell them "you're wrong"? I'm sure someone somewhere wouldn't like a lot of the things I do, either.
One problem with ERP is it can become predatory. There are ways to safeguard against that...that the Arm community is absolutely never going to accept, because the game is inherently set up to be a predator's paradise. The most fundamental rule of the game is don't talk about the game. Even with the new whistleblower rules, players still have to play mother-may-I with admins who may or may not be part of the problem before they're graciously allowed to bring their concerns to the wider community.
That's fucked up. And if you don't think so, you're part of the problem that allowed complete assholes like Shaloonsh to prey on other people.
The other problem with ERP is it's infectous to other's play. Like, there's ways to spy on people in game, mechanically. You can just stumble into an interaction inadvertently, as with the example of bumbling into the two Bynners fucking. (And maybe that was an intentional thrill on their part, "accidently" having other people to read their explict messages to each other.)
That's icky. I don't want to be party to any of that. I don't consent, implictly or explictly. But playing as a character who could spy through whatever means, I almost certainly eventually would (and sometimes did) stumble across it.
Third problem with ERP in Arm specifically isn't so much of a problem anymore. But remember: this game was created by a 13-year old. There have been plenty of younger players over the years. I'm sure that's no longer the case (because of the aging player base), thank god, but in the past without-a-doubt, there have been people who were not adults, not able to legally or ethically consent, who were involved in ERP with players who were much older and, indeed, probably even aware of the age gap.
That goes beyond icky. That's fucking fucked up. And I ashamed that I wasn't aware of it sooner, so I could quit this shitty game sooner.
I just have to live with the idea that I had my blinders on while all this was going on, because I "liked" playing the stupid bone sword elf game, and I miscalculated and believed the majority were there for the same reasons I was...that ERP was an outlier, instead of a primary pillar of the community.
100% and advertised as such, or 0% and advertised as such as the two acceptable percentages of ERP.
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