Can taboos be tasteful?

Tasteful? Not even slightly. You're better off going the GRRM route and having only the already evil or creepy characters have these traits. Try to make it "tasteful" and it will just come off creepy on your part

That and not all taboos tend to be treated with the same amounts of disdain. Incest as a result of trying to keep blood lines pure, like old nobility tends to be given a pass. People may be weirded out about it but it has a long established history in various cultures.

Having people being tastefully fucked by animals is a whole different can of worms, and I can only think of the Greeks, having any sort of bestiality stories. Although people seem to be more open to magical beasts (ie dragons) fucking humans, than humans being pony fuckers.

>party hired to investigate local magicians
>suspected that one of them placed a curse upon the royal family
>every heir is born massively deformed and insane
>turns out the family's just completely inbred

>19 years old and legally unable to consent
What kind of age of consent laws does this setting have?

Jaime isn't evil

>threw kid out of a window, permanently crippling him
Nah he dindu nuffin.

People have already said it in thread, but your options are basically GRRM or classic mythology. For the first, you treat it very soberly and have the world react to it as a taboo. It causes conflict, it's a massive reputation-destroying secret, or it's the result of awful circumstances/people.

The second is basically "gods are gonna be gods and fuck stuff/each other/themselves." and it's kinda hand-waved as semi-symbolic or something. Greek mythology's rife with the stuff.

Treating any of it as normalized is going to drop straight into magical realm though.

One of players had a wizard who tried to fuck his familiar summoned from his own soul in order to achieve some sort of transcendental incest. I didn't mind it because he was otherwise the nicest most competent player I've ever had and I would do anything to have a player like that at my table again.

>Is it possible to include taboo themes (...) in your game while keeping it somewhat tasteful
Incest and bestiality would be hard but IMO cannibalism (especially endocannibalism) could work

>What kind of age of consent laws does this setting have?
Probably the kind where women are property.

Magical realm is enforcing shit your playas don't want. If your players want to dick wolves, go for it.

Wouldn't looking directly into a wolf's eyes like that just piss it off? extremely so?

1. 20 is the coming of age in this country. The people of the West are long-lived and, with few exceptions, have long, trouble-free childhoods. Among the nobility, 20 is considered the age at which a noble becomes a full adult. Among commoners, 16 is the de facto age of emancipation.

2. Regardless of age, a person cannot legally consent to sex with a parent or guardian.

I doubt that's a full blooded wolf.

I guess. Then again, difference between art and porn is largely in the eye of beholder.

"Guy is shagging his sister" is a plot hook for pulpy porn and for a deep exporation of themes. The question is how do you manage to convince others to see it. As a fantasy storyteller, probably as the former.

a person cannot legally consent to sex with a guardian.

Regardless of age,,

soo, two adults can not have sex b/c one is a legal guardian???

what kind of hard-core sharia state do you live in??

the kind where consenting adults are stoned on a weekly basis or monthly?

I'm not sure. Even looking back on how Faerun used to be done - with plenty of casual sex in a free love sense - that gets some people upset. Even hinting that some NPCs or even groups of NPCs have relations with animals or with their families would probably disgust most players rather than make them go 'wow what a strange and interesting culture, I wonder how these social norms developed, it truly makes me more engaged with these fictional people.'

It might seem annoying to you how most people probably want something pretty close to the familiar in ethics and social views or so far out there it stops making sense, but the middle ground is just too strange.

I subtly introduced incest as not uncommon in elven society. Families are full of half-siblings, elves are bound to mate with cousins. Twins tend to also have a weird bond that sometimes becomes sexual.

Really if you're not paying attention you won;t really pick up on it, since my only hints to it are similarities in appearance, and how they introduce or present themselves by their relations and titles.

There needs to be a sticky on Veeky Forums answering every single variation of "can I have fetish X in my setting without it being magical realm?" Because the answer is always the same: in theory, yes, but if you're asking the question at all then you're not the sort of person who can pull it off. So the short answer is no.

Jaime is amoral and serves evil people. At least until recently. The distinction between that and being evil himself is kind of unimportant because it is genuine evil according to plenty of philosophical systems.

If it's not talked about at the table, you didn't put it in your setting. This includes hints so obtuse that your players never pick up on. In an RPG, not said is not done.

>I don't think anyone thought I was getting my rocks off to the thought of a man drunkenly trying to rape his underage daughter, or later murdering her.
Were you, though?

Oh no it's totally happening, and players can pick up on it if they want to.

I fundamentally disagree with this position though. The world consists of all things you put into it, discovered and not. The players are playing in the setting, sure, but the setting is greater than the players and their characters. Things move without them.

I think that's all good in that instance. Ogres I can definitely see being incestuous Hills Have Eyes type creatures. When it's a villain or some kind of monster I think it's okay, just not the Paladin Order of Autistic Gay Brother Fucking.

I think I can help you.

You are dead wrong. Anything you make up and don't share with the players at the table, even if you don't intentionally keep it secret, is not part of the shared experience that defines the game. It's just part of a piece of smutty fiction you wrote but never published.

>Is it possible to include taboo themes like incest or bestiality in your game while keeping it somewhat tasteful
>bestiality
>tasteful
nani the fuck?

So what happens when a player does in fact notice it and brings it up with the party? Would the smutty fiction in question sort of become self-aware and publish itself?

>You are dead wrong. Anything you make up and don't share with the players at the table, even if you don't intentionally keep it secret, is not part of the shared experience that defines the game. It's just part of a piece of smutty fiction you wrote but never published.

Look at the Stars Without Number GM Turn for an example of how wrong you are.

It would become part of the game.

He's talking about his setting you complete brainache.

>taboo
>tasteful
I don't think you understand what the word "taboo" means.

Doesn't matter what's in the book if it's never used. You can't use the contents of a book as a counterexample.

>Doesn't matter what's in the book if it's never used. You can't use the contents of a book as a counterexample.
Explain why.

Bitch, it literally makes a mechanical game implementation of developing the world, using a framework of various factions and their assets. The actions and interactions of these factions is what defines the hooks that the players get. Players can still do what they like, and their actions can be reflected in the Faction Game, but the Faction Game is exclusively a GM only turn, and things will progress and change without the influence of the players.

Also look into Fronts of the Apocalypse World and other PotA games, where threats will progress or decline depending on the action and inaction of the players.

Are you dense? I'm saying that nothing really enters the game until it's put to use at the table. No game book has any bearing on this argument because a game book can't make people use every piece of it, and in practice nobody ever does.

in my defense,
i have been awake far to long

>Are you dense? I'm saying that nothing really enters the game until it's put to use at the table. No game book has any bearing on this argument because a game book can't make people use every piece of it, and in practice nobody ever does.
Explain why you hold this stance.

You are a special kind of stupid to think that the rules of those games have any bearing on this subject. You can follow the rules of the game and generate NPCs and their actions all you like, and until that information is actually communicated to another person, it's all in your head and not in the game.

Now you're just being a petulant child who just got the idea that you can win any argument by repeatedly asking why to everything. But I'll play along for a little longer.

Consider the case of a GM who decides on something, anything at all, and never tells any player about it in any way. No player is aware of it. In what sense is that decision part of an act of group storytelling? No group was involved, and furthermore nothing was told.

>not in the game.
That's where you're wrong. It's actually a fundamental part of the game. Written in the rules of the game. It is literally a GM Turn.

It and PoTA Fronts are what i'm essentially using to develop the world of my game, so it has bearing in this case.

You're really emotionally invested in this, huh? I'm genuinely curious how you've come to these conclusions and why you felt it was pertinent to this thread. Especially now that you've started referring to "group storytelling" rather than "world," which are two very different concepts.

>incest or bestiality in your game while keeping it somewhat tasteful or at least avoiding magical realm territory?
>tasteful

For incest? Within royal families, perhaps. That would fit into a dark fantasy setting no problem.

For beast? You're going to creep out everyone you're playing with, no doubt.

I'll make it as clear as I can for you about how necessary it is.

If you are playing Stars Without Number without using the GM Turn. Or Apocalypse World without Fronts, you are playing it wrong. Flat out.

it is perfectly possible under the "tribals have crazy myths" idea because it's a RL thing

but there's no guarantee your group will get it and not think you want a magical realm

No you dense motherfucker. I agree with you, but they're not talking about "something in a book", they're talking about a system for the GM to do shit behind the scenes while the game runs. You're in a literal glass house, put down the rocks

I play bestiality and other taboos as a joke.

Like the party is investigating a murder, the village idiot might have heard something and they should interrogate him so they go looking for him and then they find him shagging a sheep.

Or they are visiting mountain temple and there are soem initiates and they hear part of the oath they have to swear which goes like: "As a monk I will not have sex. Not even with a man. Not even with a little boy. Not even with an yak."

It means "forbidden" in Tongan. Your point?

My current game has slavery as a pretty large factor of the world. It's not explicitly linked to any race, though certain regions and cultures value sentient life differently. Some do it as indentured servitude. Others brand and mark slaves forever. My players have gotten super into it though, cause I portray it exactly how it it largely was. Brutal and cruel, but an unavoidable fact of life. And hideously profitable. It's awesome when the it Jew and his theater major gf are wanting to hunt down the abolitionist terrorist for fucking up their income.

I've also subtly mentioned incest, but it was in the context of royal bloodlines, not fetish. There are anthropomorphic races, and race mixing is an issue for some. The lizard npc was not into chicks with fur. The human-first racist has a scale fetish. Things like that. Harkness test rules though. No animal sex.

Probably not
It's taboo for a reason

Shit the GM does in secret us not part of the game if it doean't somehow affect the players. I'm surprised you still haven't been able to wrap your head around this.

>GM does in secret us not part of the game

Wrong. Especially if it's a mechanical implementation of it. As literal rules of the game that are necessary for the game to function.

Of course, particularly the religious ones.

No.

How stupid are you? I said I agree with you, moron, I just also recognize that you're a butt-blasted idiot. You make me want to switch sides and start believing the opposite just to spite your existence. Are you a false-flagger?

I've had some DMs who were very bad communicators. They froze up and waffled when asked things the player characters would know, and they never thought to tell the things that the players would never know to ask. Surely there were lots of important pieces of information that you could say were technically part of the game setting, but not part of the game itself because they never reached us. And yes, there's an i.portant distinction there.

Huh. Consider me convinced.

Sure. My wife's character cuddled with my GMPC. It was pretty tasty.

The etymology of a word is only tangentially related, if at all related, to the real-use everyday practical meaning of the word.

The word terrific used to mean the same as the word terrifying. Using it that way would be incorrect.

The same goes for the word taboo; though it hasn't changed quite as dramatically, its use in western culture is for things that are "cuturally forbidden", and which are seen as inherently unseemly, shocking, or offensive.
It is not taboo to steal a bike; it's just illegal.

So, unless you're using the word taboo in a wrong/nonstandard way, the distinction between something illegal, forbidden, and taboo carries with it this; if something is taboo, it more or less cannot also be "in good taste." Those are generally mutually exclusive descriptions.

Sure, you might be able to find water a taboo topic down enough that a person or even a group would not mind, but that's just due to differences in opinion and feelings on the topic from person to person. And in there maybe you could find someone who could describe something as both, but they would simply be applying different semantics to tastefulness vs. taboo, as in "I think this is in good taste. (Because I don't personally feel discomfort at this version of the thing.) But it's still taboo (because I expect people other than me might feel differently about it.)"

If by "tasteful" you refer to a general sense of tastefulness within your culture, and if by "taboo" you also refer to the same kind of general sense of the word,
those two categories of thing will be mutually exclusive.

I'm sure the rest of your group, who had to wait for you to spit each other out, were absolutely thrilled.

I run games for my family user. They joined the cuddly. It was a comfy Sunday morning.

>im niot making shit upp :^>
>its real
>haaha

You okay man?

So lemme get this straight; you're saying your family is incestuous?

Where the heck did you get that idea?

the slightest hint of Southener accent, but maybe I'm just imagining things

I'm from the north midwest user.

please kill yourself

Notice something important about these two suggestions - the taboo themes are being presented in a way that is weird, and does not have to actually be mentioned in the game and could just be in the background. It's not even really trying to justify it or make it sound logical. That's really all you can get.

Why not make it super weird by having one society with incest sub-themes warring against a beastiality sub-theme society?

The beasts could be an Avatar type thing where you link the consciousness with the beast and a revered elder is a 'two soul' thing (humanish thing that can talk to animals or an animal who can communicate with humans)

The incest society has certain genetic gifts and major houses are trying to create the best descendants without watering down their own gene pool too much. (Sensing lifeforce + those with higher amounts of mana in their bodies...two houses are looking for a third bloodline to strengthen their place in society, like one that allows for rapid healing of others so the heir could be a doctor. A well paid healer deeply needed in society would raise the combined families banner very high.)

The opening chapter of A Dance With Dragons is from the point of view of a skinchanger and delves into the taboos of their culture, including bestiality. It went into some pretty uncomfortable territory without feeling like magical realm writing imo.

Incest would work because it's a thing that is well recorded throughout history. Bestiality would be better if you don't take it seriously or at the very least everyone looks down on them.

No, when it's a guy doing it he's being that guy and you should kick that creep out
kinda hot when girls do it though imo

i found the feminist

the opposite.
people who think lesbians are hot but gays are ew are the opposite of a feminist

Your posts. The OP you're replying to is talking about taboo; that's the topic.
Here's your post
>Sure. My wife's character cuddled with my GMPC. It was pretty tasty.
Alright, so your wife's character cuddling with your GMPC is related to a taboo.

So either I'm to believe that you think platonic cuddling is taboo, which to me seems absurd,
or that your "cuddling" is a euphemism for something taboo.

So, which is it?

Nah, just a different cultivar of the same shitty kind of fruit.

Neither, user.

You're thinking about this too hard.

thing is, if you treat men and women in a unequal manner that favors women, you are infact not the opposite of a feminist

as for the pornography defense

the horse-shoe effect is a thing,

thinking lesbians are hot is not treating them favorably

depends, do you base ALL your social interactions on sexual attraction,

>and I can only think of the Greeks, having any sort of bestiality stories
There are shitloads of historical bestiality stories all over the place actually. Egyptians, greeks, celts, american indians, shamanic tribes, etc.

>lesbians are hot but gays are ew
It's in The Book though. Okay, it doesn't _explicitly_ say lesbians are hot, but it does say that male homosexuality, and only male homosexuality, is condemnable.

...

They're usually best handled through through implications and understatement.

But if you want to embrace it being distasteful and really make the players dwell on it, to channel the discomfort as a sort of narrative device, then make them look the issue in the eyes without giving them time to digest or fully react. It's like harnessing anxiety for horror; arguably it's a sort of 'social horror'. Like in the movie Old Boy--it's a powerful source of dramatic tension.

Wait, where did the lesbian and gay part come in? The user just said guy and girl.

Though all that said, it's of course an issue if you're too heavy handed: don't leave the group feeling as if you've mandated tastelessness. Don't force unceasing descriptions on them.
Even in making them collide with something best avoided, don't make it feel like you, personally, are the only reason this happened, but that it's a natural consequence of the rest of the unfolding story.

just, just let him have this

not just gay/lesbian, the idea of a girl doing something taboo vs a guy doing something taboo, and it being hot when a girl does it and 'that guy' when a guy does it. follow the post chain

it's illegal because otherwise you'd end up with a lot more cases of couples adopting children just to groom them for sex