Saturday, October 8, 2016

A Reason I Love Dragon Age Games: The Ugly Details

"I was...crying and she asked me if I was all right.  After everything the demons made me do to her."

There will be spoilers in this post for a side quest in Dragon Age 2, if you are concerned about that.  The screen capture above is from the quest itself and belongs to BioWare.

Many years ago - I believe over a decade, now - I ran a D&D campaign in which the PCs had to deal with a child molester.  Some of us have had to deal with childhood sexual abuse in real life but all of us were okay with having the possibility of it showing up in our gaming.  It's ugly, but it's part of life, and there's no reason it wouldn't exist in galaxies far, far away.  

It was the first time I had ever seen such a thing show up in an RPG I had run or played in.  There may have been hints of it in old World of Darkness books somewhere, but if so, I couldn't recall them.  I'm pretty sure my players were all in the same boat when their characters happened across a caravan of prisoners who were being marched to across the desert to a prison.  (Those that didn't die on the trip, that is.)  One of the player characters was a paladin of the god of vengeance and poetic justice, and instantly recognized as such.

One of the prisoners begged to speak with him.  The prisoner admitted to his abuse of children, and to urges he couldn't stop, and to being horrified by the idea that he could be free again someday.  What if he escaped the caravan?  What if he escaped the jail, or was released?  He wanted to die and felt he deserved it.  He begged the paladin to intervene and take him out of the equation.  This led to an amazing discussion between the paladin and his peers, and an emotional choice to grant the prisoner's wish.  It was a grim duty the paladin did to his god that day, but a memorable one.

I hadn't seen anything like it since then, until playing Dragon Age 2.  The game claimed a Magistrate's son was killing children, especially elven ones, but being protected by his father from any sort of justice, which only allowed him to keep killing.  There is an undertone of sexual abuse in the dialogue and there is a real choice to be made about what to do with this man.  In the world of Thedas, demons can influence and possess people, namely mages.  The Magistrate's son claims he has demons in his head who have directed him to commit his crimes, but we never know for sure.

Some of the points of dialogue stand out and highlight the awfulness of the situation.  And I loved the scenario for being willing to go there.  It wasn't just a simple matter, and without being graphic, the ugliness hit home.  It made your choice matter more.  And the game didn't shrink from the situation for one moment.  Whether it was serial sexual abuse or murder of kids (or both), it was part of the world, a secret that could be revealed at any moment.  And the Magistrate protecting his son was also a fact of life.  You just had to deal with it.

This is the kind of adult gaming I have been doing since I started playing RPGs as a teenager, and the kind I've been hoping to see more of as I've grown older.  I understand that not everyone wants this to be in their gaming, and it certainly must be handled with care, but I and others like me are ready.  

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