Chairchucker

Paedophilia, by definition, is not consensual. Using your analogy - which is nonetheless interesting - a gay rapist is still just a rapist. Sure, but there are many things that are illegal that many people will nonetheless justify within their own mind. Semi recently, an 18 year old woman was charged with statutory rape for having sex with her 15 year old girlfriend, and a fairly large number of people, despite the fact that the 15 year old is legally not able to consent, said of this situation that it was unfair, and that the only reason anyone cares is that it's a same sex relationship. They were quite easily able to justify to themselves that, despite the fact that the sexual relationship was illegal, that it should be all right. There is, according to the story I quickly Googled just then, a Facebook group with over 50,000 members who all agree that this illegal act shouldn't be legally punished, and a petition with over 300,000 signatures saying the same. Now, these 300,000 people aren't even the person who is motivated by their own sexual desires in wanting to justify what they've done. If you can find 300,000 people who all agree that, legal age of consent be damned, a person who the law states cannot consent actually can, can it really surprise us that a bunch of people who find themselves attracted to under age people might somehow be able to convince themselves that, law be damned, age is just a number, etc?

Delayed reaction because I really have to psych myself into feeling like talking about why pedophile cannibals just need a bit of love and understanding, man, let's all hold hands... I remember observing a discussion a while ago regarding a gent in the UK (I think it was UK, anyway) who'd been caught with child porn on his PC. Not a little bit of child porn, a whole bunch. Like, 250 individual files or something. Dude got hit with something like 250 life sentences, back to back to back to... you get the picture. Anyway, the point was raised that, had he, instead of downloading child pornography, simply obtained a child and raped them, his sentence would've been lighter. Conversation then explored the following: if you're in the shoes of that guy, (like, before he decided child porn was the best solution) it might seem like your options are relatively limited. Perhaps a bit speculative here, but I doubt that someone can simply make a conscious decision to not be sexually attracted to children, any more than heterosexual or homosexual people can consciously decide they're not gonna find the opposite or the same sex attractive. Obviously most of us in society agree that having sex with kids is the wrong thing to do. We all agree that you should not have sex with kids. But that's way, way easier for you or I to hold to. We don't fancy them, why would we want to shag them? It's a somewhat more tricky decision for someone who, either as a result of their genetic make up or (so the statistics seem to suggest) as a result of abuse they themselves have suffered, but not through any fault of their own whatsoever, is attracted to the idea of having sex with a child. None of that would excuse any pedophile who decided to act on their urges and abuse a child. At the same time, though, we can't necessarily say that we would never do what they have done in their position. We have no idea what it is like to live with those desires. I think everyone has actions in their past they are not proud of, that if they had their time again they would do differently. I have definitely had times when I have acted selfishly to the detriment of others because I cared more about myself than I did about them. Fortunately none of my actions have been anywhere near as damaging as child abuse, but the main reason for that is that's not something that appeals to me. If I was a pedophile, I'd like to think that I would still, nonetheless, have the self control and the moral courage to forgo my own selfish desires in that area for the good of those around me. But without ever being in that position, I will never find out for sure. Now we don't know this would be cannibal's psychological situation, or whether there's any abuse in his background or whatever. And I'm not saying any of that would excuse what he planned to do, but it may help us understand it.

I don't think you read the articles properly, I'll quote from the first one and last paragraph. I can't see how this can be made any clearer that the main reason for rape is not about the actual sex "I believe that both the psychological and sociological perspectives regarding rape can be proven correct depending upon the individual rapist. I believe that some rapists truly do have psychological problems while other rapists feel a need to dominate women or feel sexually frustrated as a result of rejection. Regardless of the cause of rape, I don't think that there is any excuse for invading another person's body and individual space without proper consent. As far as most rape cases are concerned, I believe that both sociological explanations of sexual permissiveness and gender inequality provide the best explanation equally." "I believe that some rapists truly do have psychological problems while other rapists feel a need to dominate women or feel sexually frustrated as a result of rejection." Equal weight given to 'sexually frustrated'. Translation: they want to have sex. This link does the opposite of supporting your point.

Yeah it's pretty gross. It's also, in my opinion, pretty important that we try to understand such perverse desires, so that we can identify and treat people who harbour them. Now, it may be the case that the job of psychoanalysing would be pedophile cannibals is just not for you, and I think that's all right. If it is found that his desire to kill, rape and eat children (in whatever order he'd planned to do it, I wasn't really clear on that) is the result of a mental disorder (which seems likely to me but I'm no psych either so I guess we'll let them do their thing and we'll find out for sure) then he is, to a degree, not responsible for harbouring those thoughts. For deciding to act on them, absolutely responsible (although maybe the psychs will find something else I dunno. I tend towards thinking there's always a choice.) I mean it's easy for us to judge this guy because, let's face it, the thing he was planning to do doesn't appeal to us. It's not the thing that tempts us.

That second link seems to be doing the same cherry picking thing of "Some men don't ejaculate during rape." (An interesting point to bother raising given that consensual sex doesn't necessarily result in ejaculation.) "In one one of the interviews by the rapists." They are seizing on a small percentage of examples and saying "Therefore, this is the rule." Oh also, this quote: "A rapist uses actual force or violence or the threat of it to take control over another human being" is a generalisation that we now recognise not to be necessarily true. You haven't really made your point as such, you've just found links and said "here's some people who also agree with my view." They all seem to be taking the path of "Some interviewed rapists said this, therefore that's the case for every rapist ever." (Although strictly speaking that first link doesn't really support your point, read it again. She's basically saying "Different people have different motivations.") Third link, from what I could be bothered reading before I go to bed, didn't seem to support your point that strongly either.

"Aggression and Coercive Actions: A Social-Interactionist Perspective" by Richard Felson. Regrettably it is a book rather than something I can link you to online, much like the oft-referenced "Men Who Rape" by Nicholas Groth, which seems to be the main reference used by those that claim it is not about sex. EDIT: They're both kind of old. '79 for Groth, '94 for Felson. Maybe someone should do a newer study instead of just quoting Groth again. Who knows, maybe if they include a lot of activity that wouldn't necessarily have been considered rape by many back in '79, - much like someone speculated regarding the people polled in the surveys in the OP - they'd find a wider range of motivations.

Had a look, some of them have some pretty rough logic. Basically one says, "different rapists have different motives, some of these motives are things like power and anger, thus clearly rape is never about sex, QED." Terrible logic. Oh and since one uses Wikipedia as a source, Wikipedia also says that while there are academics who hold to that view, (anger and power and nothing else ever) there are also academics who said hey actually I think a lot of the times people have sex with people against their will because they want to have sex and they couldn't find someone who was actually keen. Basically all of the quotes saying it's all about power seem to point back to one guy, Groth, who wrote a book once and said there were only three motivations and none of them were sex. Really now? None of the articles offer any data to support this, they basically just contain something along the lines of "AS WE ALL KNOW, RAPE IS NOT ABOUT SEX."

Surely some rapes are about sex though. I mean, surely not every rapist has precisely the same motivation for committing their crime, do they?

See what I'm saying is that if someone has mental issues that cause them to think that killing and eating a kid is an idea worth pursuing, then probably what's needed is therapy. Also expanding on my previous thoughts about evil, people we can categorise as 'monsters' are convenient in that they allow us to pretend that we can completely externalise 'evil', and that there is no evil in our own thoughts. If he 'maintained' that, I imagine there are people who are, professionally, employed specifically to determine whether someone is still a danger to society. Personally I don't believe the hypothetical situation you've proposed can arise, that a person can out of 'curiosity' decide to kill and eat someone, and thereafter, curiosity sated, not be a danger. In the made up situation that he can, then prison for whatever the determined period may be, (was it 27 years or something?) to fulfill the societal requirement of some kind of disincentive to other people to sate such curiosity.

Dude had evil thoughts, and actions inasmuch as he actually kinda tried to procure a kid but is not himself inherently evil. (Is probably horribly broken.) Justice system should stick him in a psych ward and try to fix him. Maybe he can't be fixed in which case leave him there, but hey, maybe he can.

Bored so weighing in on various aspects of this topic. My view of evil is that it is more a verb than an adjective. Hmmm that's pretty wishy washy and not really what I meant so I'll start again. What I mean is that I believe that evil is a way to describe something someone does (am including thinking as a thing someone does) and not a way to describe the person themselves. For example, although I do not consider myself to be an evil person, I would say that when I intentionally act to the detriment of others out of selfishness or spite or whatever, I am doing evil. If I intentionally say something to hurt someone else and make myself feel better, that's an evil act. If I kill and eat another human being, (except in self defence or whatever else we've come up with) that's an evil act. None of these isolated incidents make me an evil person, however. Brief aside: an aspects of my view on this is also that everyone, at some time or other, does evil. Barring examples like people who die as a baby or whatever. My view of the justice system is that it's there to reduce crime and for no other purpose. Hmmm, perhaps I should rephrase that. My view of the justice system is that, ideally, it should be in place to reduce crime. Oh and to ensure justice for those who have been unfairly disadvantaged, but I don't see "Ensuring that bastard gets what's coming to him" as having any part of that. So essentially I think that 'punishments' for crimes should exist for only two reasons. Reason the first: so that people who are thinking of committing a crime will look at the possible repercussions and think to themselves 'nope, think I'll just stay at home not murdering people.' Reason the second: so that people who have committed a crime will, after the 'punishment', think to themselves "hmmm, might not murder any more people then I guess." I'm not interested in the death penalty as a 'punishment' because it seems to play more to a 'that bastard getting theirs' school of thought which I don't see as a positive.

You found it unrealistic that someone could develop a romantic interest in someone else and not immediately have sex with them? My opinion is roughly the opposite of yours. No I found it unrealistic that person could traverse the planes, meet alien creatures, kill demons, discover he is immortal but somehow not have sex with a party member who is inextricably linked to him and he is attracted to The Nameless one is inextricably linked to every one of his party members. Did you find it unrealistic that he didn't have sex with Ignus? The inextricable link is not necessarily linked to an urge to fornicate in any of those examples. Including the example of Annah. Including the example of Grace. And most of what you've written there has absolutely nothing to do with sex. He traversed the planes and killed demons so obviously he's going to want to have sex? Complete nonsense. And the idea that love implies that two characters will have sex immediately is a very mass media influenced one.

You found it unrealistic that someone could develop a romantic interest in someone else and not immediately have sex with them? My opinion is roughly the opposite of yours.

This guy is cool and his game looks cool and the first game is FREE so you should play that first game and then lob money at him for this one GOGOGO http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/315061806/nelly-cootalot-the-fowl-fleet-retro-pirate-adventu

Agreeing with the concept of 'succeeding in ways other than the quest giver had hoped.' Often I will take a quest that is clearly a jerk's quest for jerks, in the hopes that I will be able to in some way double cross the jerk who has given me the jerk's quest for jerks.

Word to the wise: Wizardry 8 owns hard. (Haven't played the others yet.) Gonna wait for a sale on account of me being a cheapskate, but I am buying these and you should too if you like dungeon crawls.

To be fair, my knowledge of the mind of a rapist is imperfect, so you may be correct on this point. That being said, I would still argue that it's OK to break the golden rule when, for example, you're killing someone to stop them from raping you even though you wouldn't like it if someone were to kill you. Given that this topic belongs to a game in a genre which often has a lot of 'morally justifiable' killing, this seems relevant.

The thing is, one cannot 'prove untrue' something which does not purport to be a statement of fact. Having said that, one can easily subvert this 'rule' by introducing into a situation people with different desires and wants. For example, a rapist might state that because he wants people to have sex with him, it is OK for him to have sex with other people, even though they might not necessarily want that. Even leaving aside extreme examples such as the aforementioned hypothetical rapist, modern society tends to set limits on free will and self ownership based on certain conditions. For example, a child may want to go out joyriding with his mates, but society dictates that he is not permitted to do this without a certain laminated card bearing his photo. He also may not exercise his free will to have a few fermented beverages beforehand. Then again, there is the school of thought that places humans as just another animal in the animal kingdom, with no more significance given to someone offing a neighbour who irritates him by driving a noisy car than one would attribute to a lion eating a gazelle. That was exactly my point though. With your example of a rapist, they are displaying a form of hypocritical egotism. While they might welcome sex, and force it on others--they will not likely approve of their victim killing them in self-defence. Refusing to allow someone to kill you, yet not acknowledging another's right to refuse your "advances" is a contradiction. Society has very little to do with what is morally right and wrong. Laws are about control, not good or evil. That being said, we might want to continue this exchange though PM. While I'm late to the thread, it doesn't need my help staying derailed. But the rapist is actually following the Golden Rule, it's the person killing him who's not.

Your observations have much truth, though I do believe absolute morality is possible without a singular authority. The Golden Rule, as it were, prevades all things. It deals with aggression against free will and self ownership. Anyone who feels that "The Golden Rule" can be proven untrue, is likely a hypocritical egotist not fully investigating or understanding the depth of the moral. That aside, I completely agree with RPGs relying on a factional mechanic for positive/negetive reinforcement. It gives the maximal amount of flexibility and freedom to design choices and paths, while still delivering a response structure to a player's actions. The thing is, one cannot 'prove untrue' something which does not purport to be a statement of fact. Having said that, one can easily subvert this 'rule' by introducing into a situation people with different desires and wants. For example, a rapist might state that because he wants people to have sex with him, it is OK for him to have sex with other people, even though they might not necessarily want that. Even leaving aside extreme examples such as the aforementioned hypothetical rapist, modern society tends to set limits on free will and self ownership based on certain conditions. For example, a child may want to go out joyriding with his mates, but society dictates that he is not permitted to do this without a certain laminated card bearing his photo. He also may not exercise his free will to have a few fermented beverages beforehand. Then again, there is the school of thought that places humans as just another animal in the animal kingdom, with no more significance given to someone offing a neighbour who irritates him by driving a noisy car than one would attribute to a lion eating a gazelle. I guess I'm not sure how hard it was or how well you summed it up because I'm actually not sure what you're saying. I don't mean to insult you, because I understand that people from many different countries contribute to discussions here so English may not be your first language, but your post is difficult to understand.

I really quite liked Divine Divinity, and I think one of the things I liked the most about it was that the game world was kind of Ultima VII ish in the level of exploration that was available. Never got all that far in Divinity 2, but it seemed to have similarly enjoyable levels of exploration. Also they had a bunch of neat side quests that were pretty cool.

Morality is a bit of a weird one because, as has been noted, it can be difficult to get people to agree on which things are naughty and which are nice. In fact, if one was to reject the notion of an absolute moral authority (with the most mainstream examples being some form of supreme deity) I would suggest that one would logically have to reject the concept of absolute morality. There are a number of things that most tend to agree are naughty rather than nice, such as murdering babies, raping people or farting in elevators, but if pressed on why these things must necessarily be wrong, it would be hard to articulate. Most people wouldn't even bother to think about it, but would instead ask incredulously 'What, you want me to explain why killing babies is wrong? What are you some kind of twisted baby killer?' which makes it difficult to have serious conversations on the nuances of subjective morality, sometimes. Often we would probably narrow it down to being the protection of rights for humans, (Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness or whatever) which of course are things that humans decided should be human rights, and not any kind of law of nature at all unless there is an absolute authority who decreed that it was thus. All of which is why I think instead of morality systems, RPGs should stick to reputation systems, so you don't get good karma for murdering evil people and bad karma for robbing them, but instead have nearby people like you more or less depending on how your actions line up with their own personal values.

Maybe Ubisoft are paying attention to some of this Kickstarter stuff and are thinking that nostalgia might net them a decent pay day. I have only played Worlds of Xeen to any extent but I am cautiously excited about what this could be. Not keen on the idea of Obsidian taking it, though, it just doesn't seem a good fit for them.

Your argument seems to be more or less 'this can't happen in our universe so it can't happen in any'. Sucks for the fantasy genre I guess. Most games I've played that have magic still do have laws of science, with the caveat that magic can temporarily break those laws. Magically produced fire still sets things on fire using whatever the chemical properties of fire are. (Again, slept through Chemistry.) If you magically summon an object in midair, gravity still tends to apply after the initial science breaking spell is cast. Magically enhanced missile weapons seem to adhere to some form of Isaac's laws of motion.

Although you do, of course, know exactly what I meant and are aware that there are ways to use a blunt object which don't involve physically touching the object if the object in question is sentient, I will propose you perform an experiment. Push someone larger than yourself in the direction of another large person and see if, despite your reduced size, you are able to hit one with the other.

Oh boy, lists! I like lists. No particular order. Rock Band 3. (Yes I know it doesn't relate to PE but you just said games, and it's rad as heck, I will fight you.) Lemmings 2: The Tribes. (Yeah I liked the first one too but this one I probably sunk more hours into.) X:Com: Terror From the Deep. (I like tech trees. I played this one before I played the first one which is why it is my favourite.) Day of the Tentacle. (This is just here to represent Lucas Adventure Games, also it owns.) Mario Kart. (No explanation offered.) (But it owns.) Planescape: Torment. (Difficult for me to explain; although I couldn't really enjoy it as much on later plays through, so much of that game was highly memorable in that it was very weird but didn't feel like it was being weird just for the sake of it, and exploring new areas was more fun because the expectation grew that a new area would actually be something I hadn't seen before.) Baldur's Gate. (I'm picking the first one because I liked exploring the areas that didn't specifically relate to any of the quests you would be given, but where you would nonetheless see a bunch of unique stuff go down like someone accidentally detonate an ogre. Conversely, I do not like exploring areas in games that feel completely generic and identical to every other dungeon, which is basically how I felt in Morrowind and a large part of the reason why I didn't bother playing any future Elder Scrolls games.) Alpha Protocol. (No game has ever before or sense made me feel more like my choices had an impact on the overall narrative of the game. Although in some ways Deux Ex: Human Revolution makes me feel a little bit that way.) Ultima 7. (Again, exploring.) Wizardry 8. (Exploring, also the sheer amount of choice in character creation and skill progression and different kinds of unique loot you can pick up, and I really enjoyed that there didn't really seem to be a level cap as far as I could tell.) Unlucky not to be included: Mass Effect 3. SSX series. Fallout games in general. (Not 3.) (Probably mostly New Vegas. In particular the add on pack which was like a b grade sci-fi movie - hilarious. ONE TWO THREE FOURBIDDEN!) Twinsen's Adventure. (I really like the aesthetics of the game, and the exploring. Same with Beyond Good and Evil for that matter.)