r/DnD & RPG Horror Stories: Asexuality Edition #2

Transcript Transcribed by Hannah E.

Courtney: Hello, everyone, and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I’m here with my spouse, Royce. And together, we are the Asexual Dungeon Masters. Because today, we are back for another round of D&D, or broadly RPG, Horror Stories, Asexuality edition.

Courtney: We ourselves are avid tabletop role-playing gamers. We have been co-DMing a campaign of all Aces for over two years now. We’re getting so close to the end of this campaign, I can taste it, and it’s been a blast. But, unfortunately, not all Aces who join a new D&D group have a pleasant experience. We have had our own D&D horror stories where our DMs and/or players have not been particularly Ace-friendly. And unfortunately, our stories are not unique. So we’re going to read some Redditor stories today, provide a little commentary, and probably get sad and disappointed.

Courtney: Our first story today from r/RPGHorrorStories is entitled, “DM Tries to Humiliate Me for my Character’s Sexuality.” “So, this is a story that happened years ago, and I didn’t feel like sharing it until I read a similar story on here. Needless to say, it hit a little too close to home and got me riled up about this BS all over again. For starters, I’m a bisexual guy. I’ve known since I was a teenager, and while not being in the closet, I don’t really bother telling anybody if it’s not their business. So this day, the only people who know are my exes, my current significant other, and the people in this story. Just as a preface, I’m sorry if I go off into random details sometimes. I’m just trying to paint a full picture as I remember it.

Courtney: “On to the story, I was playing Warhammer 40k Dark Heresy with a close friend and two of his friends from college who were twin brothers. My close friend, who was DMing, had gotten me really interested in Dark Heresy and 40k because I’ve always had lots of love for both sci-fi and horror. The twins, who I’ll later be referring to by their IC names, seemed like alright dudes, and I was genuinely excited to play.

Courtney: “Now, my DM friend had always been someone who was a little too into the weird side of the internet, if you catch my meaning. I never let it bother me, though, because usually if I’d let him know he was making me uncomfortable with the things he was showing me/telling me about, he’d back off. But in this situation, I think it was the other people sharing his interests that egged him on.

Courtney: “So, we made our characters. The twins rolled a guardian and arbitrator combo. Max Napalm was a barbarian-like Guardian, and Alex Murphy was the arbitrator. The player for Alex had some kind of backstory for how, as a kid, Alex was raised with 80s action films and Robocop was his favorite, blah blah blah. It was an excuse to just straight-up have Robocop in the game, and even though it didn’t really fit the lore, we were all fine with it.

Courtney: “As I was making my character, a psyker, I noticed the DM had created his own character sheets instead of using the ones that came with the game. It didn’t matter to me much until I noticed he added an entirely new section for ‘sexual information.’ It was all things like sexuality, what genitalia they have, the size of said genitalia. I immediately told the DM I wasn’t comfortable with erotic role-play, and he said, ‘Oh, we’re not doing anything like that. This is a sheet I have from an old campaign.’ I asked him if I could just strike it through, then, and he said, ‘Well, Max and Alex already filled out those parts on their sheets, and it’d be kind of unfair for them to do that and you to get a free pass.’”

Royce: So, that’s just an outright lie.

Courtney: Yeah. That’s pretty obnoxious. I mean, I’ll be real, I’ve never played Warhammer, but a lot of these stories aren’t about the actual game. They’re about people role-playing disrespectfully. And I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that’s where we’re headed with this story.

Royce: That would be… I have never played a Warhammer game, but I feel like that would be an especially heavy red flag in the Warhammer setting, because I feel like that setting just has a reputation for being, like, particularly violent and brutal.

Courtney: Mhm. Now, I will say, it’s not super unusual to, like, as a DM, want to know character sexualities. And in a lot of like queer friend groups, sometimes, a sexuality can be a very important part of a character. If you’re with a comfortable group of people, sometimes, that is how especially younger queer people are sometimes able to explore new aspects of their identity in a safe place before coming out in real life. But that said, even if you ask for someone’s sexuality and they’re like, “I don’t want that to be important, I don’t want to answer,” that is your answer. Not answering is a valid answer to that question. I cannot, for the life of me, think of any respectful reason why you’d need to know what genitalia the character has and the size of said genitalia. That is, like, big enough red flag – leave the game before it starts, I would say.

Courtney: And our OP continues: “I realize now that this should’ve been the point where I got up and walked away, but I was 18 at the time, and significantly more awkward and insecure, so I just brushed it off. I just filled out my character’s info like normal, and when I got to the sexual information spot, I just used average stuff for the ‘stats,’ and I marked his sexuality as Asexual, because it felt fitting for him. When I gave my sheet to the DM, he raised an eyebrow and then proceeded to whisper to the other two players about it while laughing.” Ughhh.

Courtney: “Being the awkward dude that I was, I just kinda endured it for a few before asking, ‘Is something wrong with it?’ The DM, laughing, hands it back to me, and proceeds to talk about how I wrote Asexual because I just can’t get laid, and the other players erupted into laughter. I tried to defend it, because obviously, it’s a real thing, but it was pointless. They just kept rephrasing the same joke. Eventually, it got to a point where they were accusing me of being ‘Asexual’ for the same reason, and as much as I waited for them to let up, they didn’t, and I just got more and more fed up.

Courtney: “Eventually, the jokes died down, and we finally just got on to playing the game. To be honest, the setting wasn’t terrible. Our characters were all on a massive starship, and the three of us had all unwittingly stumbled onto a conspiracy of some sort. The investigation led us into the lower decks where we were confronted by some Lovecraftian horrors.

Courtney: “Just a warning, it gets a little bit graphic here, and I’m doing my best to censor it while still getting the story across. After a few turns of combat, the DM tells me a tentacle monster of some sort has grabbed my character from behind. I ask him if I can make a check to get out of it, and he tells me, ‘Uh, no. Since it grabbed you from behind, there’s no way you could’ve evaded it.’” Mmm, I’m gonna need a rule check on that. I haven’t played this game, but I’m gonna need a rule check on that.

Courtney: Anyway, OP continues: “Cool. I notice, at this point, the other two players are snickering and looking at each other, and I ask whose turn it is, and the DM says the encounter is over. He then says, ‘Let’s find out if you’re really Asexual, though,’ and begins graphically describing my character being raped by” — Oh. — “said tentacle monster. Obviously, I got pretty uncomfortable and kept asking him to stop before I eventually shouted at him, and the smug bastard said something to the effect of, ‘It’s just a game, and at least you’re getting laid, dude.’

Courtney: “At this point, I’ve had it, and I start gathering my things to leave. The DM tries to stop me and says how we can ‘keep playing with your virgin fantasy intact,’ which just pisses me off more. He then tells me it’s my fault for saying I’m Asexual to begin with, and it’s okay to have a hard time getting laid. I eventually just got annoyed with all of this and go into a full rant about how I was just trying to play the game, and it seemed like they started to feel for me, but then I made a mistake by ending it by coming out as Bi, and saying how I’m just not super comfortable with sex-related stuff in a game like this. But just when I thought I was being taken seriously, the jokes started up again. This time, though, it was just shit about how being Bisexual isn’t real, and how if you ever want to sleep with a guy, you’re gay, period.

Courtney: “So, I just left. None of them ever contacted me again. Not even the DM, who, prior to this, had been a close friend of mine for years. Can’t really say I miss him, though. If all it took to set his sights on humiliating me was having his college buddies around, I can’t say I’m too eager to ever be around him again.”

Courtney: Yikes! The thing is, though, this is really interesting, because I feel like a lot of the stories we read are either definitely Asexual players or at least questioning Asexual players who choose to make their characters Ace. This is someone who doesn’t have that identity but still got hit with a lot of acephobia. And this is doubly interesting to me because he’s a Bisexual guy, because there is such a strong history of Bi/Ace solidarity, because the specific types of queerphobia we face are often so similar — depending on the context, of course. But in both instances, for Asexual and Bisexual, for the player and his character, we got, “That’s not a real thing.” And then also calling it by something else. So, they changed Asexual to, like, “virgin fantasy” or “just can’t get laid,” so sort of like the virgin and/or incel direction – ”Asexual is not a thing, so that’s what you really are.” Now they’re saying, “Bisexual isn’t a thing; you’re just gay.”

Courtney: But I also just want to point out that sexually assaulting the Ace character in role-playing games is so common. That’s probably one of the most common, like, Asexual-based RPG horror stories we read. And even though not everyone plays role-playing games, they are incredibly popular — especially the huge, big name ones like D&D, Warhammer. Lots of people play these games. And I think it really just says something about societal perception and reactions to Asexual people that it seems like, nine times out of ten, if you have a DM who doesn’t believe Asexuality is a thing or has a hatred of Asexuals, it goes straight to sexual assault.

Courtney: You cannot tell me that something that common in role-playing games doesn’t also actually happen in real life. And I feel like the Aces so often have been just trying to get the rest of the world to understand that things like corrective rape are a legitimate issue in our community and something that lots of us have had to deal with. And I think this just kind of highlights how prevalent the attitudes are that lead to that sort of hate crime.

Courtney: And this kind of breaks my heart. Because I go down into the comments and, like, if it tells you anything about how much we struggle to find non-Aspec people who understand these issues and still respect us and still treat us right, someone in the comments just said, “Asexual here. Thanks for sticking up for us.” Someone who, in a private setting, just played an Asexual character and refused to yield to the jeering of “Asexuals aren’t real, Asexuals are virgins, Asexuals can’t get laid,” and yet, someone reading the story is like, “Wow, how rare. How nice. Thank you for not being an asshole.”

Royce: S,o the story I have pulled up actually has a comment underneath it that I found that feels like it could have been under your post as well. It says, “Stories like these are the reason why one of my house rules is, ‘Your genitals are largely irrelevant. Don’t try and use them.’”

Courtney: [laughs] I mean, we haven’t said that is a house rule in our own games in so many words, but I think we’ve at least curated a group around us where that is just an inherent understanding.

Royce: Yeah. Unfortunately, under that comment there is a comment that I am surprised to see has positive upvotes that just says, “How can I even play bard then? If I can’t sleep with monster maidens, then what’s the point?”

Courtney: Nooo! Bards have the potential to be such a rich character class, and it pains me, not only as an Asexual, but as a performance artist, as a musician, as a dancer, as an actor, as all the things I have ever done on a stage, but also just as a storyteller. I don’t think horny bard is a personality. It’s not a personality. It’s not. It’s not an interesting character. You need more than that. Even if horniness is an element of a character ’cause that’s your jam, it’s not your whole personality. You can’t make it that way!

Royce: Yeah. I would be very tempted… I mean, clearly, you should have Session Zeros, you should talk to your players, you should have an understanding. But as a DM, as a, like, soft rebuff, I would be very tempted to be like, “Oh, you tried to flirt with this dragon? Okay, the challenge rating just went up. You’re sexually harassing a guard? You are this close to getting arrested.”

Courtney: Well, actually, since you brought up the dragon — because you were telling this to our D&D group not too long ago, so I need you to tell the listeners, because it’s actually brilliant and, I think, very accurate — what happens logistically if you genuinely succeed at seducing the dragon.

Royce: Oh, yeah! Like, one way that that goes down is okay, you roll your nat 20, you seduce the dragon. Okay, you and the dragon are now together. The party has other stuff to do. Your character is with the dragon. You two are together. You are a part of the dragon’s horde now —

[Courtney laughs]

Royce: — and the adventure moves on. Roll a new character sheet or go play with a different group.

Courtney: Because that dragon is not going to let you go adventuring.

Royce: And your party is too low of a level to kill said dragon.

Courtney: Yeah. You belong to the dragon now. [laughs] Congratulations, you are the spouse of a dragon. Maybe we can role-play a little wedding ceremony for whatever that looks like for this particular dragon. But you think you get to just seduce the dragon and walk out? Probably not. [laughs] Roll a new character when you seduce the dragon. Is that why they call it a little death? Ahhh, I made a sex joke! [laughs] It’s not often I get to make those, cause my brain usually doesn’t go there.

Royce: So, getting into more examples of role-playing situations that I just don’t fundamentally understand why people want to, like, do this kind of storytelling in a group setting: this one is called “Not My Magical College Experience,” and it is called that because it takes place in Strixhaven, which is fifth edition D&D, but it is in a subsection of the Magic: The Gathering setting. Strixhaven is a college of wizards, I believe.

Royce: And it says that they started out the group. The session was going pretty well. The group were given the general college orientation stuff, meeting some founding members of this magical world, had some classes, did some, like, sparring, general interactions, had a lot of fun. Now, where this starts to go downhill is, they are introduced to an NPC named Rosie. Rosie is a gnome who starts getting along really well with the group — particularly with the warlock in the group that, OP says here, had a bit of chemistry, but they said it was nothing very obvious, nothing very explicit; honestly, it might have been because they were both small creatures, small characters. And they “note here that the warlock player is not a very romantic person.” They suspect that he might actually be Asexual, but he was not out to the group. That was just sort of the implication going.

Courtney: Mmm.

Royce: They reiterate that he wasn’t interested in any sort of relationship in the game while role-playing or out of the game in person.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: Now, I should back up and say that OP was playing an Owlin bard, heavily inspired by just 80s rocker lifestyle and was trying to go all-in in that sort of persona. And at the point in time that the session is going, they are getting over a bad breakup and are role-playing making some bad social decisions. And they and the DM start role-playing through the process of this rocker archetype bard flirting with some other college student. And they walk up to a group of orcs and just say what OP says is a line that “should have not worked in any universe.” They go up and say, “Hey, what do those tusks do?” and roll a 20 on their charisma check. And they start joking about, you know, meeting in the dorm after classes, seduction, check passed. You know, all laughs, no big deal, at this point.

Royce: But as they get further into this procession, the DM gets to the scenario, asks for a performance check, and then details what happens with this group of people, and then asks for another performance check, and gives a more elaborate description, and then asks for a third one. And at this point, OP is wondering where the end is. They are surprised that they got this far into a detail of a sexual encounter and are feeling a bit uncomfortable. And the rest of the group has been somewhat roped into this encounter as well.

Royce: And the situation gets around to the warlock player, who originally was joking around, before this got very explicit, saying that they were ready to leave, they were ready to get out of here. And the DM positions this other character, Rosie, in opposition to him and calls for a grapple check, which the warlock fails, and then goes to detail the warlock character being sexually assaulted as a result of that failed roll.

Courtney: Oh, okay, so just more of that, then.

Royce: Yep. I did not know that’s where your story was going —

Courtney: That’s where —

Royce: — when I had this pulled up!

Courtney: That’s where so many of these stories —

Royce: It is very common.

Courtney: When you just search, like, the word “Asexual” on RPG Horror stories or D&D Horror Stories, like, nine out of ten of them result in someone’s character getting sexually assaulted. It’s tragic.

Royce: And OP says here, at the end of this post, “I feel terrible for not speaking up, but I was already embarrassed from being in the situation myself earlier. No one was saying anything aside from the DM. Everyone just kind of sat in silence as it played out.” And they say, “I’m not trying to make excuses, just explaining what I was thinking to try to justify like having not done anything in the moment. To answer the obvious question, no, there was no Session Zero. We were all close friends and had no problems like this in any of our other campaigns, so we assumed this would be no different.”

Courtney: Mmm.

Royce: “I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but thankfully, the campaign fell apart immediately after due to scheduling issues.” But, yeah, there are a lot of situations in here where role-playing games are a different dynamic.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: And sometimes, it can be difficult moving into that dynamic having to suddenly assert firm boundaries when that normally isn’t required in your normal everyday interactions. I don’t really understand why people think that a role-playing setting is an acceptable medium to say and do things that you wouldn’t do outside of a role-playing setting in the same friend group.

Courtney: Well, I mean, it kind of depends on, like, what taboos does your brain actually resonate with? Because there is, like, [laughing] plenty of violence in D&D and so I can be violent in a role-playing setting when I wouldn’t be violent in real life. So I guess that would follow that someone could be sexual in one setting but not another. But my brain’s just never gonna go there on its own accord.

Royce: Yeah, it is a very… It’s a different setting. I’m trying to think of parallels, but I don’t know that there really are any, because nothing else that I’m thinking of is a collaborative sort of storytelling thing.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: Like, I can talk to people about what they liked about movies or TV shows or how they go about playing video games, but it’s not the same environment as playing a game like that together.

Courtney: Mhm. Alright. Next one comes specifically from D&D Horror Stories, entitled “DM Keeps Flirting With Me.” “I, 19, trans man, have been playing D&D for about three years now. It was something I got really into when I was in high school playing with my friends on the weekend. And now that I find myself half way across my country for uni, I’ve missed playing in person. I signed up for a local D&D game, Primates, at a small comic book store in my new neighborhood, and I was super excited about it. I am playing a tiefling barbarian, whose whole thing is that he’s really shy until he rages, and is the thing helping me figure out if Asexual is a label I, the player, identify with. D&D has helped me figure out I was transgender, so I thought that I could do the same with this. With that in mind, when I received a consent form for boundaries, I ticked ‘Okay with romance between players and NPCs but wrote in I’d only want it if the characters clicked.’

Courtney: “My DM, 22, male” — presumably cis, because it wasn’t specified, where it was previously — “gave me the a-okay and we began playing. The party consisted of a barbarian, a rogue, a paladin, a wizard, and a Monk. And very quickly, I realized this was a role-play heavy group that had been already playing for a year and a half before I joined, which I was not aware of before I got there. The other players loved me and were all a few years older than me and quickly adopted my character as the kid of the group. He was also the youngest character, being a year younger than me.

Courtney: “I started role playing heavy to meet everyone, which I had no problem with. But I soon realized that when a bard NPC started flirting with my character, all the compliments he gave me were kind of specific to my appearance, saying things like, ‘You have a really beautiful physique for being so slim,’ but my character was described as really muscular. And I slowly realized that the DM was hardcore flirting with me. I brought it up to one of my other players, and they told me that’s just how that NPC acts. But after four sessions, pretty much every NPC would make a comment about me, and three have made sexual advances towards me. I’m still playing with the party because I don’t know how to ghost people, but every time I’ve told people this, they’ve called me crazy or say I’m overreacting.”

Courtney: So, definitely don’t ever, ever, ever use role-playing as a means of… I don’t know, how do I phrase this? Like, don’t use role-play as a means of flirting with a real person or hitting on a real person. I guess same could be said for really any strong emotion toward another person. Like, if you’re angry at a player, you probably shouldn’t take it out on their character.

Royce: Yeah, don’t manifest that into the game world.

Courtney: Yeah. You’ve got to work through those things in order to keep them separate. But I also find it really interesting that this is a group that had a consent form for boundaries but then also still made someone feel uncomfortable. So that’s kind of a thing where it’s like, it is good to set boundaries and it’s good to have conversations ahead of time. And I’m not even opposed to having a form. In a case like this, where it’s someone you really don’t know very well, that might even be a more comfortable way to try to collect and communicate that information. But I have trouble believing a form will actually cover everything that could possibly, possibly ever come up. So you still have to find a way to foster ongoing communication.

Courtney: And yeah, with this one, too — I actually feel like I want more details from this one. Because the consent form is listed as saying, “I ticked okay with romance between players and NPCs,” but then this player, who’s a questioning Ace, says, “Pretty much NPC would make a comment about me and three have made sexual advances toward me.” And I wonder if the consent form actually had a place for romance and for sex.

Royce: My thought is probably not, without more information.

Courtney: Because if it’s romance alone, I guarantee a lot of allos would think that sex is involved inherently as a part of that. So part of this could be a matter of a miscommunication on the boundary form, but I don’t know without seeing the whole thing. But still ,either way, really not cool to make comments on a player’s physical appearance. Don’t like that.

Royce: So this next one is called, quote, “‘Surprise’ pregnancy by DM without asking.” OP states that they are Asexual and that this is a Curse of Strahd campaign.

Courtney: Oh no!

Royce: They say, “So, I’m a beginner player, and this happened in one of the campaigns I joined recently to start getting into D&D. To summarize, the DM first told me my character was going to have a dream and asked me if I could, quote, ‘follow the flirt’ with the NPC who was going to appear there because, quote, ‘It was a thing for the plot.’” OP said, “Sure, no problem.” Later in the session, they found out it was not just a flirt. The DM basically narrated the NPC character taking OP’s character to bed and fading to black, with obvious implications. Now, this NPC character was Strahd von Zarovich himself in disguise. And the big climactic point of the following session is informing OP that they are now pregnant with Strahd’s heir.

Courtney: Surprise, that’s the real Curse of Strahd.

Royce: And so one of the reasons why I pulled this one up is because, at this point, OP is really not okay with the situation. They said they would have not accepted this, as they are really uncomfortable with pregnancy topics involving themselves or any of their characters. But then they ask Reddit. Well, first of all, twice in this post they say, “I did not speak up in the moment and that is my fault,” which is something that is very common in these posts, even though it is —

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: — completely the DM’s fault. The DM crossed boundaries here. They also ask the internet, “Am I being too dramatic? Am I exaggerating if I just want to leave the campaign and block this guy?” They say, “I feel kind of sad because the other players are nice and fun to play with, and I really really hate conflict, and I feel like I’m the bad one for abandoning the campaign. But I’m extremely uncomfortable with the situation.” And something that we see very commonly in these D&D horror stories is the refrain of, “No D&D is better than bad D&D.”

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: Like, some of these campaigns, some of these sessions can be very traumatic. They can be very emotional. They can be very bad in general. And you should not try to argue with yourself to stay in a harmful situation because you’re really hopeful that fun moments will come out of the game.

Courtney: It can really get in your head, too, if you’re in the middle of a campaign where…

Royce: Sunk cost.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: If you’ve been at it for a year…

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: But some of the comments on this were pretty good. One of the top comments says, “Oh no, I’m sorry you’ve been caught in the DM’s fetish campaign.”

Courtney: Mmm.

Royce: But further on, some people who have probably played this campaign themselves — Curse of Strahd is one of the most famous fifth edition D&D campaigns. It’s a big deal.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: Strahd himself as the D&D Dracula, I believe, goes back to first edition.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: But there are a couple comments in here that just say, “Oh, as soon as I saw this, I shouted, ‘Strahd only simps for one person, thank you.’”

Courtney: Strahd only simps for one person! That is his whole deal! [laughs]

Royce: That is not your random character who just woke up in Barovia. That is Tatyana and her incarnations.

Courtney: Spoilers!

Royce: There are a lot of abortion references in here. One person was like, “Alright, your character is about to just consume copious amounts of alcohol and drugs.” Someone linked “Brrap Brrap Pew Pew” from BoJack. [laughs]

Courtney: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. See, and things like this.. First of all, like, making a character pregnant, even if you take away the sexual implication — which you shouldn’t, because that’s a thing that needs to be — like, you have to know that someone’s comfortable with that before you go there. But there’s also just something very bodily about it that probably is never going to cross the mind of a DM who’s just going to do this to you, because that’s disrespectful, but.

Royce: Well, I was just thinking about the consent form that you had just mentioned in the last one. This is a very particular type of body horror. Like, forced impregnation is a very specific type of body horror, as would be things like magical force gender swaps and things of that nature.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: Like, things that happen to your body that are not part of your control that have major physiological ramifications. That is an aspect of body horror that does require some amount of consent from the people involved.

Courtney: Mhm.

Royce: And I bring that up because those are known, I guess, genres or tropes that I feel like I can identify. Like, if you were to go through aspects of body horror, you would find those listed in there.

Courtney: But also just, like, “Follow the flirt.” Like, flirting doesn’t have to lead to sex. So that was horribly communicated on the DM’s part. And the thing is, with the player saying, like, “I didn’t speak up,” this is so far over what I would say is a reasonable line of expectation for most people that it would need to be communicated ahead of time, definitely.

Courtney: But in any situations, even if it wasn’t something this extreme, or if it was something extreme in a totally different way, like, something that can actually be very traumatizing, things that can be very shocking like that, things that can make someone very uncomfortable — you don’t know how people are going to react to being put in that situation.

Courtney: So for much, much more minor things, I can sympathize with the argument of, like, “Oh, well, you didn’t say anything at the time, so how can I know you’re not comfortable with this if you don’t say that?” In some of those situations, I can understand that. But when you do take it to such an extreme like this, some people are just not going gonna know how to react.

Courtney: I do think it’s interesting that body horror was the way you described that. Because I think that can fit, but in my mind, I was trying to find parallels of, like, let’s say you’re in combat and, as the DM, you decide to chop a player’s arm off or something like that. Like, anything that is an extreme modification or debility of your players’ bodies, I think, definitely needs to be okayed ahead of time, and if…

Courtney: In the right group of people with the right DM, I think there are situations where you can explore a character becoming disabled by some means, and I think there are ways to do it with nuance in a way that can be very fulfilling in a role-playing game. But anything you do with that is already going to be homebrewed. There aren’t rules for what happens if you become paralyzed, if you lose a limb, if you… There are certain spells — like, in D&D, like blindsight, but there aren’t rules for, you know, what happens if a character becomes blind in the course of a campaign, things like that.

Courtney: And especially in situations where maybe the DM and all of the players are able-bodied people, there are ways that that can also get really, really disrespectful really fast, even if everybody is okay with playing like that. But, like, that’s something that I think always is going to need a conversation. And even to a much lesser bodily extent, just taking away, like, really key, important items in a character’s build — like, a character has a really good, really important, maybe sentimental axe and it’s a barbarian character. I feel like you, as the DM, and the player you need to communicate, like, “Is it okay if I break your axe, or is this going to be so upsetting to you as the player and the character that you’re not going to want to play anymore?” kind of a thing. So, like, especially when it’s dealing with your player’s body, you can’t just, as the DM, decide to change something so drastic about player character’s body and just expect them to be okay with that without a very serious discussion beforehand about boundaries.

Royce: Yeah. Other aspects of body horror that fit into this very frequently, because we — I mean Curse of Strahd is a campaign that does involve a certain amount of body horror, so it is the one that we are currently running Out of the Abyss — does have a certain amount of body horror, although that tends to come with —

Courtney: It’s psychological.

Royce: It has more psychological horror, but there are elements of gore, or the body horror comes more from the fungal or ooze-like entities —

Courtney: Mmm.

Royce: — that could basically break down or reshape humanoid figures in some cases. That’s where I think a lot of body horror comes from in, like, horror media. But I think that if you went through analyses of the body horror genre — like, the Alien franchise is very famous, and they have, you know, parasitic organisms that burst forth from people’s chests, killing them, which is a, you know, a fatal pregnancy.

Courtney: Oh, I can see that, I guess. I have never watched it.

Royce: You haven’t seen Aliens yet?

Courtney: No, I never have.

Royce: That’s the horror of the Chestbursters. It’s an involuntary pregnancy.

Courtney: Fascinating.

Royce: And that is described as a part of the body horror genre.

Courtney: Mhm. Mhm. Yeah, makes sense to me. This next story from RPG Horror Stories is entitled, “The Time an Ace Player Was Made to Play a Porn-Inspired Character.” “This happened many years ago, so unfortunately, I do not remember the names and classes of everyone involved. The only people really pertinent to the story are the DM and myself. We had met in high school. At some point, after the DM graduated but I was still in high school, we were at a party with mutual friends and he invited me to join a D&D second edition campaign that he already had in progress. Excitedly, I agreed. He then told me that we would meet up later.

Courtney: “When I went to my friend’s home, I had planned on playing a fighter. I had recently bought the Fighter’s Handbook, and it had different fighter kits. I liked the idea of playing a wild elf, because they got a strength bonus, and picking either a beast rider with a Smilodon mount, a berserker, or a Samurai. This was back before the idea of a Weeb ever existed, and the DM didn’t like anything from an Eastern campaign. Wanted Europe Medieval fantasy only.” Was Advanced D&D the era of, like, Oriental Adventures? Because don’t get me started on that. [laughs]

Royce: Oriental Adventures was ’85, which was Advanced D&D, yes.

Courtney: Hmm. Okay, so that’s what they’re talking about. A lot of harmful orientalist tropes in that.

Royce: Yeah, I guess OP didn’t mention, but my thought of, “Oh, you’re playing D&D back in the ’80s. Maybe it’s for the best that you don’t try to do Far East character?”

Courtney: Maybe it’s for the best. I mean, there are other great podcasts that cover these things in extensive detail that you can find if you’re really interested in learning about these tropes as they pertain to D&D and role-playing games. There’s, like, the Asians Represent podcast. DM Steve is one of the guys who goes through and just reads the book and talks about everything wrong with it. And that was actually, come to think of it, one of the issues I had with our DM too, because I kept getting sent, like, third party material that was like, “The geisha bard can only be played by an Asian woman, and she can use her body as a spell casting focus.” And I was like, what is wrong with you? Why did you think I would find this neat? I find it horribly offensive, actually.

Courtney: Anyway, OP continues: “I got there and told him I wanted a fighter, but he said they already had a few close combat classes. DM then told me that they needed a healer and I had to be a cleric. I told him my concerns and he told me that he would help me with spells, but to mostly choose healing spells. I told DM that I didn’t know about gods or anything else. He then told me he pretty much had a character idea for me already. DM’s character idea was a human cleric of a god of fertility. He gave me the names of the porn star that he had in mind. Unfortunately, DM didn’t realize I was Asexual, never watched porn nor had any desire to, so I had no idea who he was talking about. DM told me that in all this person’s movies, they only wore a bathrobe/towel of a certain color. So even though I was a cleric and could wear armor, I had to walk around in a towel everywhere.”

Royce: RIP your A/C.

Courtney: Right? Yeah. Also, again, this is a “Leave the campaign before it starts.”

Royce: You were just presented with so many red flags.

Courtney: All of them. A sea of red flags. OP continues: “I’ll use the name of the star that’s well known today and say my character was named Sister Daniels.” Am I supposed to know who that is?

Royce: Is that a Stormy Daniels reference?

Courtney: Oh, is that a Stormy Daniels reference? The one porn star I actually know! [laughs] Quick, what spells would a literal Stormy Daniels cleric have? Control weather. Can clerics do control weather, or is that just wizards?

Royce: Yes, high-level clerics can cast control weather.

Courtney: That’s why they are highly formidable opponents against former presidents. I can see why this OP would shy away from being spellcasters as a newer player, too, because you just have less you need to keep track of.

Royce: I did that as well. I mean… And I’ve played a lot of RPGs. I just didn’t have good access to the material. So the first couple of times we played D&D, I played a rogue for a one-shot and a barbarian.

Courtney: Mmm.

Royce: And part of that, I guess, is also for variety, because I tend towards magic in video games.

Courtney: Mhm. Yeah. Which, honestly, for people who really really do like spellcasters and are much newer, I think warlocks are fabulous for them, because you do not get a lot of spell slots, so you get really well-acquainted with a few particularly good spells that you have to use strategically.

Courtney: Anyway, we have Sister Daniels. “The DM really liked for casters to come up with their own spell incantations and awarded XP for role-play. He told me that a big part of my role-playing a cleric was giving speeches in town and attempting to convert the townsfolk. For my incantations and speeches, he insisted I use a lot of sexual innuendo. I went along with it because he was a friend I knew for a while. I knew he was usually a player and rarely DMed, so I wanted to be supportive. I also thought, ‘How bad could it be?’ I know I triggered a flag by saying this. I also wasn’t in a campaign and wanted to play. I hadn’t heard the phrase, ‘No D&D is better than bad D&D’ yet.”

Courtney: It sounds like this person had a character concept that, honestly, he just needed to play with a group who was okay with that character being in the campaign. You don’t, as the DM, get to say, “Here is your character. Here’s how to role-play them.”

Courtney: “I show up to the session where all the players are also either friends, the same age as the DM, three to four years older than me, or I had at least met before. So I introduced my character as Sister Stormy Daniels.” Aha! It was Stormy Daniels. She is going to help convict so many corrupt politicians and failed businessmen. “...Cleric of blah blah fertility god,” then proceeds to describe her appearance “based on whatever DM told me that she looked like and say she is in just a towel.

Courtney: “We head out on a journey to the next town a few days away and everyone in armor and gear while Sister Daniels is, again, just in a towel with her god’s preferred weapon, like a spear, club, whip, short sword, stiletto, etc. My sermon / speeches involved not only blessings for pregnancy and easy childbirth, but also increased male size, bedroom stamina, satisfaction, breast size, suggested sexual position, exercises and the like. During combat, my attacks came with prayers to feel the ecstasy of my shaft penetrating their body” — ugh — “and the like for piercing weapons or inviting them to be smashed by bludgeoning weapons in which my club looked very much like a certain purple bat that would later appear in the Saints Row series.” What is that?

Royce: The Saints Row series went viral at one point. Saints Row was kind of like Grand Theft Auto.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: And one of the Saints Row games had a giant dildo as a bludgeoning weapon.

Courtney: Oh, no! Terrible. “DM also liked for casters to role-play invocations and prayers with spell. So guess what? My spell prayers were also filled with innuendo: prayers for allies to heal up and regain the stamina to go for another round of action, stiffening them up for protection, for the enemy to go flaccid and weak, flee before a superior divine figure, etc. I know this is filled with many red flags, but I explained it away because I was young and DM was a friend; I wanted to be supportive since he didn’t DM much; they needed a healer; I didn’t want to disappoint, and all that. Again, I was Ace. So a lot of this innuendo was lost on me.” Oh, poor thing. I get it, though. I get it!

Courtney: “I couldn’t tell how dirty my role-play was. I just modeled it after what I heard people in school saying. I was undiagnosed at the time, but I am also Autistic, and if I was making anyone uncomfortable, I didn’t pick up on it. Periodically, DM would ask me to tone it back, but I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I was just doing what he told me to do. I didn’t think I was any worse than the examples he gave me when we were creating the character, but again, I figured I must be missing something. At least one thing I was missing was his mother kept coming within earshot behind all the players, but within view of DM.

Courtney: “I only went for two sessions. After that, two weeks went by and I didn’t hear anything. So I called the DM and he told me they had met just a few days before. When I asked why he didn’t let me know, he made an excuse that he thought someone else was going to let me know, and he doesn’t call anyone, they call him and ask. So, he suggested I call him a few days before our planned session date and ask. I started doing that and it kept being that I was calling too early, so to try later. Soon, I was calling two days before, the day before, and the day of, just to be told no or to be told yes then no. This got old really fast because it got in the way of me doing anything else, so I just stopped calling after about two weeks. Not long after that, the campaign fell apart. Over the next few years, I tried a couple more campaigns with him as the DM, but that rarely went anywhere.”

Courtney: One of the examples OP goes on to say is that they were finally able to play a monk character, but that, quote, “He also told me that in order to play up that I was not from the standard land but from a different country, I would have to try to mimic a Chinese accent.” Oh, yikes! “He and the other players also kept mixing together Chinese, Korean, and Japanese tropes, acting like they were all basically the same. At my school, I was one of only three BIPOC students, and I transferred in from a much more diverse city and school, so no one thought this was wrong. He told me if I didn’t do it, I would get docked role-play experience. I decided not to join because there was no way I was going to do that.

Courtney: “Another event that happened in a game with that group, but with a different DM, was that one of the player characters tried to sexually assault a non-player character. We were all telling him to knock it off because it wasn’t cool, but he tried anyway. DM made us all roll to determine if we realized he was gone. Our high-strength fighter was the one who noticed. When the fighter found the rogue and the DM said what he was doing, the fighter said, ‘He is going to teach the rogue a lesson,’ and sexually assaulted him with a broomstick that was in the hall of the inn. The campaign quickly fell apart after.”

Courtney: So, yikes, that one’s a whole lot. Also interesting how so many of the same DMs that are sexist also end up being racist, among other things. I can’t even necessarily say that this DM was definitively acephobic, because I think, if I recall, OP said he didn’t know that they were Ace, but definitely, like, too sex-focused and too willing to take autonomy away from your players. All things that are bad.

Courtney: And on that note, today, we would like to feature a gaming-related MarketplACE vendor. So, big shout out to the AroAce-owned Gremlin Woodworks, where you can get handmade wooden writing tools, personal accessories, tabletop gaming and household items. We personally ordered a really, really cool dice box that was painted in the colors of the Asexual pride flag. These are just, like, beautifully worked little wooden boxes that magnetically slap together, so they’re very secure. Hold your dice in them. I, actually — after buying this, I just happened to get, sort of around the same period of time, two sets of really miniature dice, just tiny little dice sets. One is kind of the colors of the Ace pride flag — it’s got, like, purple and black — and then the other one is sort of the colors of the Aro flag, so it’s, like, green and gray and black and sort of marbled swirly pattern that you see on dice a lot. And they’re so tiny that I can actually fit both sets of these dice in this little dice box. And so it’s very cute. I break it out every Monday when we play our all-Ace D&D.

Courtney: But if you yourself are not a gamer and, for some reason, you still listened to this entire episode about gaming horror stories, there are some beautiful ballpoint pens. Some of those are also in the Ace pride colors. If you are the sewing sort, there are some gorgeous seam rippers. Just really cool stuff. And if you want a flag that isn’t the Ace pride flag, this shop has a bunch of others. There is the nonbinary flag, bi flag, trans flag, rainbow, so you are certainly not limited to flag options. All of the links to find Gremlin Woodworks is going to be in the description, so make sure you go check them out.

Courtney: So, that is going to be all for today. This is your sign to play more games, but don’t be weird about it. Remember that no D&D is better than bad D&D. And 10 out of 10, cannot recommend highly enough: get yourself an all-Ace D&D group. Maybe get an all-Aro D&D group going. Get all of your queer friends from all areas of the spectrum together and fight some dragons. Don’t seduce them, because you will get added to that dragon’s horde. Will not be as fun as you think it will be.