While I was busy showing people how to play Epic the card game on Friday I missed all the drama happening elsewhere at the expo. Now I don’t intend that to seem like I’m making light of what actually happened. I’m not. But I struggled to find a better word to describe what happened. I feel what ever word I use sounds like it is trivialising what happened. And I don’t want to do that.

On Friday during a RPG session that was being run the GM decided to cross the line and do something I think was totally out of order.

Here is a first hand account as told by a person in the game.

(I grabbed the screen shot above off one of the Facebook posts that shared what happened. Unlike the person that shared it I have removed any way to identify the person involved. What happened is more important than who it happened to.)

Naturally this has been a hot topic of debate and even made the BBC News Website.

Firstly the organisers of the expo need to be applauded for their handling of the incident and quick response. They seem to have done everything right as soon as they were made aware of what happened.

I know they have said they will review things and put stuff in place to avoid this sort of thing happening in the future. However I don’t think that the process they had in place for approving the RPG sessions was at fault. It was obvious that the GM had not included in his submission for the game that this would be happening or hinted to the players before hand either.

So I fail to see how the organisers or any other event could avoid this happening in the future. What you can’t stop is a GM being a total dick and just throwing something just as vile and unacceptable out of nowhere in to the game.

If I need to state it, for the record I think what this GM did was disgusting, unacceptable and I can’t imagine any circumstances (even with real good friends) that this would be appropriate.

What I did find odd, was that some were kind of defending the person online, using the freedom of speech etc defence. You can’t defend this. It doesn’t fall under the freedom of speech.

What I find hard to understand is the mentality of this person. Just what thought process did they have that made them think this was a good idea? I’m baffled.

Single handedly this person has not only harmed those involved in the session, they have bought the hobby into disrepute. I’m hoping after the dust has settled that the person has had time to reflect and see that what they have done is wrong, and made an apology to those involved. But something inside me says that they are finding the attention and coverage fun. I don’t know why I think that. But if the person thought the subject was a good idea, and then enjoyed the aftermath of it. Something tells me that they may not be entirely repentant.

Which is a shame. There are so many positives to the hobby. The last thing it needs is dicks like this ruining it, and destroying those positives.

I hope that those involved get the support they need, and that they hopefully will find peace.