Never On Sunday

Just saw a web page for an RPG titled Maid at maidrpg.com. Player characters are all maids in the service of a single master, who by default is a lonely and socially underdeveloped young man teenage boy, though an old lech or a marble patriarch may be easily substituted. In addition PCs are also exotic combatants: humanoid cyborgs, witches, super-ninjas, aliens with ray-guns…whatever floats your boat, as long as it’s deadly, young, female, and, of course, babe-a-licious. The maids must deal with a range of threats—giant robots, rival ninja clans, lawyers with claims against the estate, a shortage of clean sheets—all while keeping the master both safe and comfortable.

Maid simulates a minor but distinct genre of Japanese animation, and crosses it with the major “chicks with guns” genre. It is meant as a tongue-in-cheek game in the grand tradition of Toon or Teenagers From Outer Space, including tables to produce extreme and/or amusing results and an immunity from death intended to encourage irresponsible, over-the-top behavior. But I’m not thinking “silly like Toon.” I”m thinking “Eww.”

See, the whole “maids in service of a young master” trope, more often than not, is just what it sounds like: the premise for animated pornography, often with a rape/submission theme. It doesn’t have to be porn. It could be innocent fun, if your tastes run to silly, or a bouncy satire of anime and its many idiosyncrasies. It could even be serious with a few rules tweaks, or at least mock-serious if delivered with a straight face. Yet even if the GM never raises the slightest hint of pornography in his campaign, the subtext will be pervasive. Like furries, everyone with the slightest passing acquaintance with the “stable of maids” theme in anime knows it’s a popular subset of porn, and, also like furries, once seen, cannot be unseen. No matter how scrupulously G-rated the game remains, it will remain X-rated in every player’s mind.

And, of course, there’s always the risk that the GM won’t treat it innocently, but rather as his own vicarious wank-fest. We are talking about a hobby with more than its share of maladjusted geeks and fanboys, after all.