Hi All,

Sorry to post about something unpleasant, but I thought it might be worthwhile discussing and hopefully doing away with. What I am referring to an ugly and unnecessary term that I’ve been confronted with once or twice: ‘dicerape’.

Personally, I don’t think it’s appropriate language for a community-oriented, family friendly site like fumbbl. Blood Bowl is silly fun. It’s a pastiche full of cartoon-style violence where the hits are actually represented with a POW! similar to a Looney Tunes or 1960s Batman.

Rape however is always serious and never fun. It’s among the most traumatising and dehumanising experiences a person can suffer. It is not appropriate to invoke in a friendly game against an opponent you probably don’t even know in a real life, and about whom likely know little to nothing of their life experiences.

As well as still being prevalent in societies throughout the world, sadly sexual violence is being used as a weapon of war in current conflicts in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Under these awful real world circumstances, it is impossible to know how anyone in this community or their loved ones might have been affected.

I have challenged opponents who have used this nasty term during play, but without going into any level of detail like this post. I have simply said Blood Bowl is silly fun, rape is not, can we please find less loaded language. This usually been fine. But sometimes people can be offended at being called out. This is also understandable as there was no literal intention behind the phrase, but then you've faced with acrimony between fumbblers over this horrible, unecessary language.

So when in doubt, why not just leave it out? Blood Bowl coaches are a bright, creative cohort. We can definitely find better, less nasty and more fun ways to express ourselves. The dice represent your team’s performance under pressure. As a hovering 50%-win rate, hit and miss coach myself, I find that sometime I let my players down with bad calls that get them in trouble, and sometimes they let me down by blowing well thought plays that shouldn’t have been hard to execute. This can be frustrating, but at least dumping on the players can be part of the fun in a way that ranting about dice or insulting opponent coach is not.

I am sorry for a serious and sort of moralising post. I think it’s my first and I hope it’ll be my last. To be clear, I am not calling for formal censorship or enforcement, or for anyone to be shamed, reprimanded, banned, cancelled, or anything else. I am just saying let’s keep things friendly, and if we sometimes find that tough, at least let’s always keep them in perspective.