Maybe I am only looking at this because I am a mom of a little girl who is picking up words around her, but i like the fact the old SR editions used 'drek' and 'frag' and we slipped in BSG's 'Frak.' We could curse with feeling but not teach our children bad words. In one of the novels an older character actually says Fu*K and is called quaint. NOW the new book has the old, quaint, 4 letter words in it.

In RL my husband can curse fluently in several languages but he usually avoids it unless something is serious. In fact if he does use a 'bad word' it is so uncommon that I know there is a problem that probably needs attention, but his characters are often quite happy to have a foul (SR foul) mouth on them.

Do you use real curse words in your game or the made up ones? Why? Parents? children? listening in?

Our group curses with real curses using half a dozen languages. Sometimes one might need some duct-tape to cover up mouths aka. vittusaatanateippi

"Use it loudly and proudly, *uck you!"

I'm a parent, and I used to game with parents. One guy was notoriously foul-mouthed, but the rest of us swore in-game, or not at all. I think it adds more to the game. There's something about saying: "Frag off, slitch" that says Shadowrun to me. Just like "Smeg" means Red Dwarf, some things just go together.

I'm with Cain, although I am not a parent, I often replace swearing with nonsense words, because they have more meaning & take the edge off my annoyance/anger when I say them. Being a 'Dwarfer' (a Red Dwarf viewer), I've used "Smeg" in many variations, and even tossed in 'dipswitch' from ReBoot.

I'm french, reading the book in english, so when there's swering, there's no drek, but a real swear.


I don't mind at all having foul words in the book. or having none. Whatever.



And in game, I do it depending on roleplay. A streetganger? foul words! A corporatiste? None unless I want to add a special flavor to him...

As a GM in my game, I flavor the NPCs depending.

For example, our group recently tangled with the Russian mob in Seattle. For a major NPC I did my best impersonation of "Boris the Blade" from "Snatch", with contemporary foul language.

One of the NPC fixers the group has runs a French restaurant for his legitimate business. Of course "Merde" is used by him.

Street gangs I have use old Shadowrun lingo such as "Drek", "Frag", and Japanese slang such as "Omae". I actually wish I knew more Japanese curse words.

Generally speaking, all NPCs aren't necessarily foul mouthed. It depends on the character's background and education.

I'm with Cain. I have kids, I don't mind occaisional swears, but I don't want them to be inundated with it. On the flip side, like Cain said, "frag off, slitch" has something Shadowrun to it that the modern equivalent lacks.

Even split down the group. Am a lexicon junky so I use the SR slang to set the scene as does one of the players, the lasses perfered to swear real world and the remaining two mix and matched.

For me the SR slang is evocative of the game world. For my girlfriend it is just kidifying the game. Different folks different strokes etc.

If you check out Sunnyside's poll, you get a pretty good idea of how many of us are using modern profanity and how many of us are using faux-swears.

I game with adults so we use the rhythm-and-Real-Deal-Holyfield cussin'. I can't say substitute frag for fuck and keep a straight face. Yanks me right out of the game, like Chris Claremont sprinkling tovarich or mein leipzig into the speech of the X-Men to make them "foreign".

Yup, in our games it is not uncommon to hear "Frag off smeg head!"

I am of the school of thought that believes that there are no bad words, only bad thoughts and bad intentions. One can convey those bad thoughts and bad intentions with with most beautiful and polite language possible, but that doesn't change their character. And one can convey good thoughts and good intentions with coarse and vulgar language. Again, that doesn't change their character.

The choice, then, should be determined by poetry. Which sounds better in the context at the moment.

The fictional curses of Shadowrun are indeed a flavorful and important part of the setting, chummers; but sometimes other terms roll off the tongue more easily and more eloquently.

*shrug*

The word "fuck" is about 500 years old. Its etymological ancestors have been around for quite a while...more than 2.5 millenia, by some theoretical paths.

It ain't going anywhere in the next century.

We rarely game when my 5 year old is around. We can get a bit loud and profane at times. Fortunately, his grandparents are gracious enough to watch the boy every other Sunday afternoon while we play.

I've always liked reading SR slang, though we've rarely gotten in the habit of using it in-game.

-paws

My groups tend to use real swear words mixed in with the Shadowrun slang.

Though some of the Red Dwarf slang and firefly slang is "good" enough to see some use anyway. Maybe even in RL. (Smeg, git, gorram). Also out of the SR words only "frag" seems weak. The others are quite usable.

While many books/TV shows have tried. I've never felt a replacement for F*&# has worked.


However if I had a group of kiddies I'd have no problem dropping my games ESRB rating and the swears.

The first time my 17 year old daughter joined us for Shadowrun (16 then actually) and very off the cuff her former Ganger babe turned Runner threw out "Frag your drek eating mommacita pony boy!", off so casually, when they were 'aggressively negotiating' for some stolen parts with her old crews biggest rivals, I almost fell out of the chair. Apparently she'd been listening in the last six months.


Isshia

I've never had a problem with swearing and children, and I have quite a few.

It has been my experience that if you teach kids that certain words are bad, then consequently you are either being bad or a hypocrite when you use them yourself. On the other hand, if you teach kids that certain words are adult only or even situation appropriate, then you avoid that problem.

I believe that cursing is just more words in the (whatever) language, so I have no compunctions about cursing in front of anyone. If they're a parent and believe differently, I'll respect their wishes, but I see no reason to censor myself otherwise.

While you're right as far as it goes, there's a difference between a few choice words on occasion, and a constant stream of obscenity. Even with the approach you mention, hearing swear words used casually encourages kids to use them casually. And since we're playing criminals and street gangers, the obscenity often flows freely. Using fictional words does make a difference.

I guess experiences vary. My games can get quite graphic, and I'm a rather foul-mouthed person in general (much more in person than on the net), but none of my kids are anything like that. Of course, I don't believe in censoring their TV or DVD/video viewing either, so they get more than their fill of that kind of thing there as well.

This may just be a YMMV thing. All the kids that I know who swear have parents who swear frequently as well. You can't teach them "situation specific" when their parents use it in every situation. And IME, "Adult only" doesn't help when kids start thinking they're grown up-- in fact, sometimes it can make it worse.

Maybe you just have good kids, or maybe you're just a good parent. But just because it works for you doesn't mean it'll work for everyone else. In fact, I'll bet that you've discovered that parenting for each child is unique. Some things that work on one kid just don't have any effect on others. In my case, I'd rather play safe than sorry.

No doubt that all children are unique. That's one of the reasons I was careful to qualify my original statement with 'it has been my experience'.

Fortune, I had no idea you had kids... to be honest that kind of scares me. There are more of you running around somewhere. Heh, I have trouble handling just the one of you here on the net.

Chris

Is having kids pick up fictional swear words really any better? In context, the meaning of the word would be obvious anyway. If your kid goes on a tirade about fragging the motherfraggers up their drekholes at school, I imagine that the consequences would be the same, particularly if that tirade is about fragging the motherfraggers up their drekholes with a shotgun so har that it reaches their mouths and then blowing their motherfragging brains out.

I figured if I kept trying, I was sure to get a Spike Baby sooner or later.

Generally, yes. Threatening violence is one thing, but threatening it with a stream of obscenity is even worse. Kids will threaten to do lots of things, but they generally don't carry them out. OTOH, swearing is not only bad for the kids, it makes the parents look bad as well.

BSG makes "Frak" pretty darn expressive.

According to my husband 'git' it an actually fairly common word, along with 'pratt' not made up by Red Dwarf. Some people say 'smeg' is real too but in general use RD has claimed it. 'Gimboid' is all theirs.

I'm am an avowed member of the mix'n'match percentage of Runners. If Duchess didn't call the group's troll mechanorigger a "bloody fuckin' trogg" at least once per session, the game just didn't feel complete. On the other hand, I used "frag" synonymously with "shit" (and, playing a Brit, "shite"), which worked better than the frag/fuck replacement. I never felt that worked, much like sunnyside and Wesley above.

"Smeg" is from smegma - aka "dick cheese" - the buildup of dead skin cells, oil, and assorted nastiness that can build up under the foreskin, or under the clitoral hood.

And now, you wish you didn't know that.

I never really looked at it from the point of view of being more "friendly".

It just never occurred to me.

The language is a part of the universe. I can't really imagine it without at least a little of it.

And there are so many words added and changed that have nothing to do with profanity whatsoever.

It's all just immersiveness to me.

Actually smeg is formed by the acid-fast bacterium mycobacterium smegmatis. Oddly enough one of the closest bacteria to it is mycobacterium tuberculosis. Three guesses what that one does, and the first two don't count.

Chris

EDIT: The location was right though mycobacterium smegmatis is largely consider male only so I don't know about the clitoral hood. I would assume that is a rare occasion.

Way back in the '70s, I played in a punk band called Smegma.

You have exposed your self at last Laughing Man

I am a "Farscape" fan, and have enjoyed using the term "Frell" in replacement. There was a S-word too, but I forget it now.

The "Merovingian"(sp?) curses in French because it is like wiping your ass in silk.

I consider "Frag" the curse for "death", just as "F*ck" is the curse for "sex". Although my players only said it to illustrate the ridiculousness of the given predicament in game; so "frag" is also the curse for "futility" as is "F*ck"

My own pesonal favorite "swears" are: Turd (as in you can eat a turd sandwich), Duecsh-baggio (as in you are a Duecsh-baggio), Nut-saccio ( as in I have a big Nut-saccio), Fart ( as in FART!), Son of a Biscuit-eater, and God damn it.

*: u

Just to throw in my .02¥, our group uses Frag/Drek/Hoop because we liked that flavor from the early books.

I would also like to see their return to the books/adventures as a marketing tool. RPGs are already viewed by mainstream parents as akin to a meth habit - they don't need an extra excuse to feel that way.