Having read some of the blog content in here about my hebe and ephebe years as a roleplayer in school it would be easy to assume the way we did things back then is how we did things in the years since then. Not so.
After that phase I discovered Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu followed shortly by Kult and then the World of Darkness games. Most notably Werewolf the Apocalypse and Vampire the Masquerade ‘a beast I am lest a beast I become’ as well as the best-when-personal 1-1 sessions Wraith the Oblivion and the ambitious Mage the Ascension which I fell out of love with when I realised that it’s premise is liars at war. Extensively it is paradigm warfare of persuading a critical mass of others to believe in your own self-deception for personal gain up to the point where reality pings back at you because you pushed it too far.
My studies into chaos magic have correlated with the accuracy of this system. Mostly through observation how the cracked minds of chaos magicians warp when reality pushes back at them. Or worse, the warped minds of chaos magicians crack when reality pushes back at them.
The only magic I do is protection magic and hex-reversal magic. I am very powerful at it.
My core group developed a game called Psycho Killer which is the most traumatising horror game I ever experienced because it’s borderline real. Not safe, do not play this game, you have been warned. I have no responsibility for what you do with your imagination. We stopped Psycho Killer after only a few sessions due to its impact on us afterward.
That’s not the adult roleplaying game I want to discuss today. The adult roleplaying game I want to discuss today is somewhat dangerous to discuss at all. Not because of anything we did, are doing or intend to do, but because of what society has done to reframe the context of the original theme we had been working with.
What we did not know at the time, what nobody knew at the time because it had not been invented yet, is the abbreviation MAP means ‘Minor Attracted Person’ used for people sexually attracted to those under the age of legal consent. Which is a polite way of saying 'the P word' although it includes hebephilia too.
As far as 5th edition D&D is famous for helping a lot of LGBT people come to terms with their own sexuality through the safe space of fictional roleplaying games, even there nobody likes pedophiles.
I wanted to discuss this innocently. Thats not so easy in the light of MAP and the cultural backdrop of strong anti-pedophilia sentiment throughout the mainstream Western world. I personally also feel strongly an anti-pedophile sentiment having been victim of pedophilia myself which I do not want to go into here. The point is simply how it is not so easy to discuss the original intended story. The impact of society having changed the original context of the story through no fault of our own. You'll see what I mean as you read on.
It was only after some great adventure "to discover the location of an ancient map prophesied to return unto the open world below the skies during this generation, a powerful map hidden to time, mysterious map destined to show a way beyond the darkness of misperception and ignorance," did the Player Character team of Warrior-Ambassadors somewhat akin to Knights Templar discover that this specific Map was the name given to a fourteen year old girl currently somewhere along her journey through puberty.
Somewhat embarrassed and surprised the team recognised the importance of protecting her from various factions also out to get her for their own purposes. Map was horny as fuck and a complete brat. It was embarrassing at first until it was funny and then it was a very cool but understandably adult adventure.
Map was taken almost but not quite entirely against her will to see the crumbly Seer who had originally sent the characters off to find her/it with a warning of impending doom should they fail. The Warrior-Ambassadors demanded said crumbly Seer explain why he/she/it/they had neglected to mention Map is a child who thinks she’s an adult, and not a thousand year old scroll of faded parchment as had been expected.
At this time it was explained that Maps power is the gift of vision, a specific vision to each man with whom she beds. Only by collecting all the visions will the true path be known. Map herself does not see the visions. Maps job is to collect them and piece together the pieces so the Future may be known.
At this time one of the players quit the adventure on the basis he couldn’t handle the humiliating adult content of the storyline. The GM handled it well as that his character had quit on the basis of it being too much for him. He returned later as one awesome NPC though, almost as if this had been destined to happen for the greater good of the story.
The thing is, Map was going through a phase of her puberty where she was discovering her own sexuality, much to the humiliation and enjoyment of the players and the frustration of the characters who were by now beginning to realise the mission they had been charged with of protecting her meant literally stopping her from going on an underage sex spree as a result of her wild hormones running rampage.
It was decided to stick her in a regular Church of the Virgin convent to get some level of education into her.
Aside from an unusual birth mark used to identify her, which happens also to have been adopted to be the sign of a particularly quirky cult whose assassin-like fundamentalist acolytes have long awaiting her return for generations and who fully intend therefore to lay claim to her, Map was a relatively normal peasant kid from an outlying rural village where not much at all of any interest ever happens. The Cult of the Open Mouth are chasing Map intending to do something strange ritual sacrificial shit to her. This alone indicates how much she needs protecting.
The convent are happy to take the young girl but she has other plans and routinely escapes. These episodes are largely driven by her hormones and frustration with the mundane orthodoxy of the Church of the Virgins somewhat austere bordering on sadistic disciplinarian practises the likes of which only a convent of repressive nuns could possibly have dreamed up.
Of course the Cult eventually discover her whereabouts, burn the convent down one fateful night and steal her and some of the other sisters away to their remote cliffside cavern lair on an island further around the coast and out to sea.
By the time the characters catch up with her whereabouts, storm the fortress, kill the high priest, read the library for mind-bending information to understand the world from their compelling perspective and raid the treasury, Map has escaped again, helped along and rescued by a forest bandit of her own age with whom she had fallen deeply in love and given what we assume is the first of the Visions to.
An event which changed him. The bandit decides wholly to help the characters in their mission mostly because he sees the benefit to the girl of her having a team of Warrior-Ambassadors as her allies and by consequence as his allies too. He explains the Vision to them all and swears to protect her even despite her nature, which is so much like his own they seem a match made in heaven for each other. He understands her life mission completely and they both accept an open relationship is something which works for them. It is possible his character arc was intended to be his struggle with newfound feelings of monogamy even while being the famous lothario of his generation with a reputation which precedes him.
As the story progresses through various scenes necessary for the ongoing protection of Map as an assortment of other interested factions catch up and to educate her in the world through experience it is decided to keep moving, to keep her on the road in disguise, rather than to settle down and become a sitting target once more.
Map chooses the way. She is navigator, led by instinct. The natural way of path-working. Map also has visions of her own, typically to direct where to travel next and where things may be, but also in how to heal rifts between people around her.
It is during this period where it is revealed there are maybe one or two other men encountered along the trail who have been blessed with a Vision required for the completion of the directions. Within these visions is information as to world changing events occurring elsewhere in the world, seemingly innocuous until all put together and deciphered to reveal meaningful prophecy and story threads of what will happen if we do or don't use this knowledge to do the right thing.
She seems somehow to enslave various men to whom she gives visions to become her protectorate as a war band forms around her and the legend grows, raising its own problems and generating its own momentum as they become caught up in a prophecy not entirely under the control of anyone but fate.
Map is promiscuous. It is her destiny and a necessity so she is entirely justified in her roguish behaviour. By now the group have a sexually active promiscuous fifteen or sixteen year old girl to look after. They have already had the conversation about age of consent in a medieval fantasy world and decided it’s up to Map what she does with her gifts. In the real medieval times the age of consent was as soon as a person was ready. There were no laws about it other than Chastity which she sure as hell isn't and neither are most of the folk around these parts. Following from which decision, it’s easier to support her rather than try to control her and lose.
Of course the unspoken adult awareness is perhaps one by one the player characters are all going to share in the Visions so they themselves become components of the living map required to find a more enlightened way beyond the darkness of misunderstanding and ignorance.
The GamesMaster was a good few years older than the rest of the players and had his own adult responsibilities so the campaign was regrettably discontinued. Which is perhaps the best thing which could have happened to it.
But by then we were discovering meta-theatre and adult roleplaying games involving actual real women. That in the adult industries the term ‘roleplaying’ means something different than dungeons and dragons. Usually. Not always but that's for a different blog.