So While Every is Raving About _Sword Dream_

I am so excited about this product line to come out. I am sure it's not a Piece of Sky Pie drummed up to give the OSR crowd yet some more reason to drag their brand into everyone's feed stream. I can't wait for Sword Dream: Nebulous Phenomena Drama the sci-fi version myself. But something else is troubling me.

So at something called the UKGE, the United Kingdoms Games Ennui-Inhibitor for Couples with Kids, a guy by the name of Kevin Rolfe either described rape or he simply implied it by saying "You awaken naked, hand-cuffed, and your (asses) hurt." He then ran the gang through a typical "old school" (not OSR) bout of Characters arguing with or begging the GM for pittances of making the session any sort of fun for anybody except himself. The players, three, I think, played along until the end of the scenario and then promptly reported it to event organizers, I think. Now either the three of them reported it to convention staffers. Or one of them, Anjuli the Beholder Queen, went to Twitter, tagged the UKGE organizers, and complained about the sit-down. Sometime later, a couple, or more, organizers assembled to stop Rolfe from running further games and ejected him from the convention, and as of right now from ever coming back.

The Interwebs went on to speak of pedophilia and gang-rape not being acceptable at gaming conventions. Then some woman (saying her name here strikes me as doxxing) or the real person of Anjuli went on to basically make sure Kevin Rolfe's name, home address, published works, and latest Kickstarter effort would be associated with pedophilia and gang-rape to anybody evenly mildly being attached to her photogenic profile picture. Rumors of pre-emptive boycotting of this Rolfe guy at real game conventions, IN AMERICA, started making the rounds.

It is at this point I started looking into the nuts and bolts going on.

The man's own defense, according to Grim "Always take the bate" Jim in a publicized chat window dialog, is shifty. He alternates between that he meant that they PCs had diarrhea and were not date-raped, to that he runs seven events at every convention that he goes to, he apparently never sleeps, and that he can't remember what he exactly he said to convention staff to be expelled. And his supporters from there haven't stopped speaking in puerile and froggy-rightwing slurs about people that aren't Incels.

Still I feel the guy was wronged.

Taking both sides at their word, they were vicariously gang-rapped as older adolescents, and the GM was underslept and could not properly speak for himself when confronted by convention staff. Let's take a look at the by-laws of the club that runs the event, first.

https://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/AttendeeTerms.pdf

Someone, that at least attended the babysitting expo as a GM (general manager or one of Rolfe's comrade in arms Game Master) said that he, along with a gang of unnamed others, think that Rolfe violated the "Use of bad language, verbal abuse or swearing at other attendees, exhibitors, Venue Staff, UK Games Expo staff and volunteers.• Any physical violence towards attendees, exhibitors, Venue Staff, UK Games Expo staff and volunteers, including pushing or shoving.• Racial abuse, sexual harassment and intolerance due to gender, race, religion and sexual orientation."  clause.

Okay. Regardless of the legally silly term "bad language," reading the tea leaves here, and Rolfe's use of the "Diarrhea not rape" defense line on reasoning, indicates to me he used the words "shit" or "shit-covered" or "shitty"  in front of an audience, that I can confirm was over 18 years old if only by asking the event organizers. But besides the inference of gang-rape by the audience, do we really know what he meant? Was it really rape? Was it by a gang? Did one single Hercules-like NPC rape the gang of them?  Was it a couple mixing things up? My point being, unless the GM explicitly described a gang rape, none occurred in the context of the shared experience, except in the actual shared experience of three customers requiring the price of their tickets back and not receiving the refund. I don't know if that last bit occurred or not, the BBC article, my main source for "rapey" nature of the situation didn't cover that. In any case, I am not seeing virtual rape included in the list of offenses here. So despite the UK Hobby Gamer Exploitation Expo 2019 website's charge of "shocking(ly) inappropriate behavior" there is a case of harm caused by no foul here (see SOCCER) outside of the all too common love of English people liking to say "shit" more than Americans of the same economic and social background. Punishment for the use of the word "shit" by anyone over 18 is a bit excessive since about 1961 (Date Line Franco's Spain).

Okay, situations that are not actually swearing, that express the most harmful actions people can do to each other, like RAPE, is a thing these days, especially at a ticket-selling event that proclaims to be a FAMILY FRIENDLY venues while including "Over 18" events to get the Call of Cthulhu players into RPGs meant to be for "kids with bikes". So while the term "Naked, handcuffed, and (ass)-hurting" is a colorful left over from the barbaric times of 2016, it might be offensive to clause 13's stipulation that "the types of (behavior) that would be found unacceptable and would not be tolerated at UK Games Expo." Still unless the GM threatened to rape and whatnot any staff confronting him on his performance from the complaints his event had received, expulsion for life, even beyond just that event itself seems excessive. 

While compiling my week's of notes here (well four days' worth), I am glad to see that haven't needed to mince my points of view because I said too much too soon. There is a point to being patient and persistent. That is being sincere about things.