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| Also, no one feels the need to hesitate about defending Forgotten Realms - and I could tell you some things. |
Yes, that Gor.
I'm willing to bet that most people reading this have never heard of Gor, or have only heard it as the most profane and reprehensible hate literature in existence. Anyone who brings it up these days is either a fan of the books or doing so disparagingly, and the former category have essentially cordoned themselves off from the rest of society so as to be impenetrable to outsiders. Even 1d4chan/1d6chan, normally the South Park of the TRPG community when it comes to shock humor, has an article on the series that's one of their most vitriolic.
What might surprise you is that things weren't always this way. In fact, Gor was surprisingly influential in the early science fiction and fantasy communities - and, yes, that includes the early tabletop gaming community. It was never exactly mainstream, but it did have its influence, and there was a time where you could say you were a fan of Gor and people wouldn't recoil from you making the sign of the cross. It even got a few (very bad) film adaptations, one of which made it onto Mystery Science Theater 3000 (Outlaw, S05 E19 - it has absolutely nothing to do with the source material, but Jack Palance is in it, with predictable results).
And you know what? I know where those early names in the community were coming from - because Gor might well be one of the most gameable settings out there.
Let me back up a little, though. And put down those torches and pitchforks. Let me answer a few questions, and hopefully we can come away with a little more understanding.
What's a Gor?
A Beastman warrior, forming the majority of the Brayherds of Chaos, which have threatened the Empire for generations.
Okay, but all jokes aside. Chronicles of Gor is a long-running series of pulp sword-and-planet novels (a la John Carter of Mars) written by John Norman, starting with Tarnsman of Gor in 1966, and still being published to this day. Not all the stories feature the same characters or narrative, but they largely concern a university professor who is abducted by aliens and taken to a planet called Gor, orbiting the Earth on the other side of the sun and inhabited by the descendants of various human civilizations from throughout history coexisting at a roughly Iron Age technology level, where he becomes a powerful warlord.
Okay. What's so bad about that?
So to understand why Gor developed the reputation that it did, you need to understand the context surrounding it.
See, the books themselves are not really very good. The writing is dry, and the stories are largely an excuse to get the characters from place to place. But what really sets it apart is the worldbuilding. The world of Gor is incredibly intricate and detailed, and large swathes of the books are devoted to detailing different parts of the setting, its various cultures, and their practices.
It just so happens that these practices involve slavery, including sexual slavery. John Norman was writing in the time of the Sexual Revolution, and he has a few nonfiction publications exploring the rising fetish culture of the era. That context shaped the books, too. As such, the books detail various practices the Goreans use to keep, train, and use sex slaves. And when the BDSM community was rising in prominence at the time, many latched onto the descriptions in the books and used the information to shape how they handled things in the bedroom.
It's important to realize that the earlier Gor novels don't focus on this all that much. It's always there, but it's not really given much more focus than, say, Gorean honor culture, or weaponry, or the caste structure. The novels themselves aren't much different than what you would find in, say, a Conan the Barbarian story.
But due to the timing, some of the most prominent and most vocal members of the fandom were those people in the early BDSM community. And for better or worse, John Norman knew his audience. He realized that his books were selling because people read them for the smut, and he started writing more and more for those people specifically, with later books focusing much more on sexual slavery and including more focus on erotica. As such, the perception of Gor shifted to being "a sex thing" more than anything else, and that fact made it harder for outsiders, who might have liked pulp sword-and-planet adventure but had no interest in BDSM, to get involved. This in turn led to the community becoming increasingly tied to fetish culture.
That does not take away from the fact that, if you look past the sex stuff, it's still a wonderfully detailed, evocative, and elaborate setting that's just asking to be played in.
But Gor is about how all women should be sex slaves and how the ones that don't want that should be raped until they do!
This gets into the other side of the coin with the changing perceptions of Gor - the books started out as a part of the science fiction and fantasy fandom, but switched focus over time to instead be targeted at the BDSM community. These later books contained material that was characteristic of erotica, particularly BDSM erotica, including depictions of sexual slavery and sexual violence that were intended to titillate readers. But the books were still viewed through the lens, and judged by the standards, of people in the speculative fiction community, where this material was not commonplace. Naturally, this led to people believing that the BDSM content was in some way a reflection of the themes of the stories, or the personal beliefs of their author.
This isn't exactly true, on either aspect. Gor as a setting is not really about sex slavery or misogyny. It is stated on numerous occasions in the books that 98% of Gorean women are free. We don't have a figure for the entire planet, but it is mentioned that about 10% of the population of the city of Ar is made up of slaves - which is proportionate to some estimates of the Roman Empire, if not lower. Most slaves are female, but of these, many of these are used for labor, not sex. It's just that much of the writing focuses on female sex slaves, but this is not stated nor intended to be a representative sample of the norm. Norman focused on it because it sold. And the themes of the stories themselves are not unusual for BDSM erotica - if anything, they're tame by those standards; the books do not go into graphic detail on abusive or degrading practices, and a surprising amount of the sexual content is told through implication and occurs "off-screen." This is more than what can be said about some of the novels your bookstore probably has on the erotica shelf. The Gor novels, then, only seem offensive by the standards of "serious" science fiction.
As for John Norman himself, we have no reason to believe that the content of the later Gor novels is reflective of his personal philosophy. If you look into his nonfiction writings on sex, his outlook is not dissimilar to that of accepted voices in the modern BDSM community. His 1974 book Imaginative Sex focuses on the practice of erotic roleplay, and there he specifically lists consent and trust of one's partner as paramount in such a sexual relationship, as well as the fact that there are boundaries in one's sex life and personal life that must be respected.
In fact, some of his advice is hilariously quaint by modern standards. When discussing BDSM practices, he goes as far as to insist that using an actual whip on your partner is unacceptable; one should instead pretend to whip their partner because the fantasy of being whipped is erotic, but actually evoking physical pain is an inherently abusive act. I've never been to one, but I can say with confidence that if you said that in most BDSM clubs you would be laughed out of the room.
Also fun fact: Imaginative Sex presents several femdom scenarios. Just in case you thought he actually believed the stuff about men being naturally dominant. Sorry, try again.
But isn't there a culture based on Native Americans that are literally called "Red Savages?"
Yeah, I'll give you that one, that's pretty bad. That's why I'd call them Plainsmen if they came up in a game instead. There. Done.
It's important to realize that the Gor novels are products of their time. They were written in the 60s by a man who was born in 1931 - for reference, that's not a baby boomer; boomers are younger than that. Of course they're going to have things that won't fly by modern standards. So do plenty of stories that are beloved by the TRPG community. Kuo-Toa remain a staple of the Monster Manual, and they are based on a story about how mixed race people are disgusting and horrifying. We can accept that times were different then and strive to be better.
But wasn't there a Gorean sex cult involved in human trafficking? And don't a lot of Gorean BDSM people think you shouldn't use safewords?
Yeah, and they're pieces of shit. As previously stated, those people do not represent John Norman's beliefs or vision. There are going to be people like that in any fandom; they shouldn't be allowed to tarnish the good parts of the community. Should we judge D&D players by the standards of that guy who died LARPing in a steam tunnel in the 80s? Oh, wait, people did, and we laugh at them to this day.
But the Gor novels are poorly written anyway!
Yeah, you're not wrong there. John Norman is not a particularly good writer. What he is is a good worldbuilder, and the quality (or lack thereof) of his prose shouldn't devalue the genuinely interesting and gameable ideas he puts forward.
I'm uncomfortable with RPing sex at the table. Especially with strangers.
So am I. But as stated, there is plenty of material in Gor, as a setting, that has nothing to do with sex. There is no reason a Gor campaign has to address the topic of sex at all, let alone BDSM. It's important to know the boundaries of your players and what they're comfortable with and what they aren't (hey, that sounds familiar...). Yes, the official Gor TRPG includes sexual skills. I get why they did that, but I still find that weird and uncomfortable and I wouldn't use them if I was running it.
If you think the entire setting is too closely associated with fetish culture to feel comfortable using it at the table, that's fine. You can always take inspiration from certain parts without using the whole thing. You can just change certain names, and hey, anyone who notices can't call you out on it without outing themselves. There's plenty of ways you can make use of the material and stay well within your comfort zone.
I was in the Gorean RP community and it's full of elitists who think people who don't follow the books exactly are subhuman!
I wouldn't want to play with those people either. Again, we shouldn't let bad actors color a given fandom or community. When I'm running an established setting, regardless of what it is, that is essentially our version of that setting at the table, and canon only matters as long as it's fun. Hell, there are aspects of Gor canon I would do differently (more on that in a future post). Anyone who doesn't like that isn't going to be fun to play around, and games are supposed to be fun, so there's no room for them at the table. You don't have to play with them if it's going to make for a miserable experience.
I'm in the Gorean RP community and I think people who don't follow the books exactly are subhuman! Gor isn't a game, it's a way of life!
Fuck you. Next.
Something something Houseplants of Gor! Hahaha, look at how funny and original I am!
Please, for the love of god, get another joke. People who don't like Gor have fewer jokes than Imperial Guard players or transphobes. Seriously, that was kind of funny in like the 90s, but it doesn't need to get brought up every time someone mentions Gor. Give it a rest.
Well, that does it for the first post in a perhaps ill-advised series of essays. Now that we've got that out of the way, I'm going to devote my next posts in this series to exploring the influence Gor had on the fantasy gaming scene (you'd be surprised!), discussing the factors that make it lend well to RPGs, and highlighting some parts I personally find cool. Stay tuned!
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