Gor (John Norman)

This article or section is about something involving/related to /d/. Expect PROMOTIONS and possible mental scarring. Also rape.

Gor is John Norman's magical realm.

This started as an Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiche long ago in Tarnsman of Gor. Gor resides in the Sol/Terra Libration Point 3; i.e., it is the counter-Earth, which is somehow protected from Newton and Lagrange yeeting out its metastable orbit by MAGIC.

Tarnsman starts the series innocuously-enough: the hero Tarl Cabot, Norman's self-insert as a university professor, somehow gets translated over there and then has to deal with this cruel and slave-owning society, where men are exulted as warriors (or damned to a short, brutal life as labor-slaves) who reign over harems of women indoctrinated to serve as sex slaves. So far, so the gritter parts of - say - the Hyborean Age; that's standard. As we go along, we learn the women are being brainwashed through the power of rape. Err... okay, grimdark maybe? But eventually we just have to accept that Norman likes it here.

And so do Norman's fans. There's actually a community of bondage-and-submission devotees who see this shit as near-Scripture. The hell, man.

The Priest Kings Golden Beetle made it to Fiend Factory in White Dwarf 49, so Gor (regrettably) has been /tg/-relevant for some decades now. Dragon Magazine even gave Cabot stats, in the "Giants of the Earth" line (#61): Human Fighter 20. And since 2017 there is a RPG.

You might be thinking that we're exaggerating the creepyness of this setting. After all, things have changed since the 70s, when this debuted. But even during the 70s, people became increasingly prone to going "dude, what the fuck?" as the novels progressed. Even his appearance in Dragon Magazine made some note of this, describing him as Lawful Evil in alignment and noting he used to be Lawful Good, but he went full misogynist after being captured and forced to be a slave to a Gorean tribeswoman called Telima, which exacerbated a loathing of women he'd developed as a child being raised by an unpleasant aunt, so now he has the same "women belong in the harem pleasuring me" attitude as any native Gorean. It even went so far as to give him these "charming mechanics...

Because of Tarl Cabot’s prejudices, female player characters must tread very lightly in his presence. Tarl’s reaction (see page 63 of the Dungeon Masters Guide) is checked initially, and again later if modifying factors come to play. Subtract 10 from Tarl’s reaction toward any woman encountered or singly in a group; subtract 10 more if the woman affects “male” prerogatives (e.g., adventuring, warfare, combat); subtract 10 more if a woman is rude or unpleasant to Tarl or his friends, and 10 more if a woman is from Earth (these types particularly irritate him). If Tarl’s reaction to a woman (with modifiers) is 25 or less, he will decide to abduct the woman (at the first possible opportunity) 40% of the time. To girls he enthralls, Tarl is stern and domineering, but he has never slain a woman. Gorean slave girls are drilled in the arts of the dance, the harem, cooking, sewing and cleaning. His caveman approach has proven very effective, and the female prisoner must save, as against a Charm spell, or fall madly in love with him.

Fun fact: a fan submitted a letter to Dragon #63 complaining about Tarl being given the Lawful Evil alignment. In Dragon #66, the author of Tarl's entry in Giants in the Earth posted their nearly page-long rebuttal, which ultimately could have been boiled down to "because he's a slaver who drags women from their home and rapes them until they are too mindbroken to do anything but serve him, you fucking idiot".