Safety Tools
My theory is that Witch and Succubus found Wicked Uncle’s Wheel of Torture. But like the hapless Aristocrat before her, Necromancer seems to have discovered a line she will not cross. Maybe it’s got something to do with her unexpectedly gray alignment? She does have that pesky Paladin-related romantic sublot after all. But more likely, the ‘line she will not cross’ is really a veil. In the same way that the aforementioned Aristocrat lost her ear off-screen, some things really do deserve the fade to black treatment.
The notion of safety tools is on my mind lately thanks to a recent forum debate. I was disturbed by the amount of pushback this aspect of Session Zero received. To some extent I get it: Long-running groups who know one another well may not want to deal with the hassle. If you’ve gamed together for a decade or more, you likely have a solid sense for what your buddies are willing to tolerate in the parental guidance suggested department.
But FFS, haven’t these people ever heard of r/rpghorrorstories? Seriously, hit that link and read some if you’re unfamiliar.
My own hot take is this: Safety tools exist for a reason. We’d all prefer to just slay dragons and roll dice and make pop culture references with our buddies. But if these “cringe” and “weak willed” and “sensitive” safety tools can prevent some of those horror stories, maybe don’t shit on ’em.
I think a lot of the dudes that dismiss safety tools have never experienced their own horror story. They just can’t conceive of them or their gaming buddies going through something like that, and so it gets dismissed out of hand.
“I’ve never seen it, so it isn’t a real issue.”
And that’s ignorance rather than malice. Which is why I think the link to that subreddit is so important. Some of this stuff is truly heinous, and gamers need to understand exactly what these tools are trying to prevent.
So what do the rest of you guys think? Have you found yourself including these measures in your own games? And (if you’re comfortable sharing your story), have you ever had to make like Necromancer and actually invoke them? Let’s hear those harrowing tales of X-Cards slammed and Scripts Changed down in the comments!
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I never had a dedicated tool for that, apart from my tongue. With that said, there was one case were I ended up asking the rest of the party whether they were comfortable with the way the scene was going or if I should be tone it down. Appropriately enough for today’s strip, it was an interrogation scene and it came to my character, as the only person with any investment in face skills whatsoever, to extract some answers out of our guests. Not only did no-one voice any reservations though, one of the other players actually praised that scene after the session was over.
Excellent handling of the situation, just ask and feel the group out.
I gather you didn’t use the tickle feather:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/interrogation
I haven’t ever been in a game that directly used X-cards or similar tools, through several campaigns have adopted a “is there anything that’s off limits or which should be covered by a fade-to-black”-talk as part of session zero, with an explicit understanding that of-course we’ll adjust if something comes up during play that someone didn’t foresee wasn’t good for them ahead of time.
We are all there to have a good time after all.
An example relevant to todays comic is that several people have mentioned that torture scenes are under “fade-to-black” (whenever we aren’t in the sort of games where torture scenes wouldn’t be tonally or genre appropriate anyways.)
I do think safety tools are a good thing in general, through I find it important to remember that, like almost everything else, they aren’t a one-shoe-fits-all situation.
For instance the very first time I heard the X-card explained included the context of a forum poster explaining how even the presence of an uninvoked x-card had triggered their own trauma and made for an entirely miserable day. It was because of the “there’s no obligation or expectation to explain, no-discussion so that we don’t accidentally create social pressure to do that” aspect.
That ended up triggering the posters trauma from some horrible situations they had been in, where afterwards they had felt socially isolated by peoples unwillingness to talk about what had happened to them and quiet preference for the having the situation “ignored”.
Obviously that situation doesn’t remove the real good X-cards has done for other people, but well it does pay to keep in mind and to use the right tools for the right group.
Yeah, I get the point of the X cards.. but I also really am not keen on the idea that the scene has to be utterly dropped with zero discussion
Like.. some bits, sure, it’ll be very obvious, but some scenes have multiple things going on at once, and like.. surely it’d be best to communicate which is the actual bit that is bothering you about it.
It’s not that I don’t want the scene to be stopped, so much as, I’d rather know what was making them uncomfortable so it never even comes up again
Probably why we’ve never used X cards, we go with the session zero stuff and talk limits in advance generally, yeah
In that case, I think the important line is this: “There’s no obligation or expectation to explain.” Going from that concept to, “You are discouraged from talking about it,” is an important step NOT to make.
If I was ever in this position, I’d expect the response to be something along the lines of “do you want to talk about it — maybe later?”. There’s no question that an explanation is certainly helpful to the rest of the group in avoiding future problems, but seeking an _immediate_ explanation may not be reasonable if you’ve stumbled on an unseen landmine.
And there _will_ be unexpected landmines if you’re playing with people you don’t know well. Asking them in advance isn’t really a solution, because it’s often going to be something they don’t like talking about, and won’t raise unless they have reason to suspect it’s a problem.
I’m aware that I’m just rediscovering what advocates of these tools already know, but pointing out that “Session Zero” safety tools won’t help in the moment seems like a really important point. They just straight up do different things.
I’ve recently started playing more with unfamiliar people, and I make sure to include X-cards and a clear list of lines and veils in every game. You can’t always play with family, long-term friends, or other well-vetted people – maybe you need to join a pick-up group, or a player decides to invite a friend you’ve never met to join – so you need some way to assert boundaries with them, and these tools are how. While thankfully they’ve never come up in-game for me yet, they have helped me become more comfortable playing with strangers by establishing clear guidelines and mutual trust. Better to have these safeties and not need them than to need them and not have them.
Like I said in the OP, I tend to think that this stuff is MORE necessary with strangers. But I’m beginning to wonder if new campaigns should start like this even with long-time friends? I mean, suppose someone’s dog died recently and you spaced it? Wouldn’t do to go John Wick on ’em.
Indeed. Probably don’t need to go into as much detail if you’ve already got the guidelines figured out, but a quick recap of the X-card system and double-checking if anything’s changed is a good idea.
I’ve never seen these things needed in a game, but then I play with close friends. I think it’s not just that you get strange people, but that people act weirder around strangers who don’t know them already. In that if you already have say work, school or sports club social relationships with someone, those set norms and boundaries, and people subconsciously live to those even in different settings.
By this logic I would also expect online play to have more weirdos than meeting in person because it’s that much more distant. No idea if that’s the case though.
My mother in law is head of a county library system. She gamed with her employees, and she STOLE FROM THE FRIGGIN’ PARTY as a rogue. No one called her on it.
I think maybe there’s something to that.
No, because as I’ve mentioned before, I play almost exclusively with long-term friends… the formality of safety tools feels somewhat redundant within that group.
However, I definitely see value in them when playing with strangers… I’ve been to a few cons, and while I’ve never encountered anything particularly troubling to me, it does feel like people act up a bit more in those situations… play a more edgy style, because it’s just a one-off game with people who won’t be sitting across the table again for next week’s session.
Makes me wonder if the “edgy con style” is acting out, or if it’s a bunch of different gaming expectations clashing in unexpected ways?
More study needed. Please fund my research. 😛
In my opinion, it’s acting out.
And I suspect that this is why a lot of us old-timers don’t really feel the need for a lot of these tools. I haven’t had someone act out like that in a game in what… 25 years? Back when I was in high school and college, I had players do some truly heinous things to NPCs, but once I was out of school and my groups were more mature, the RPGHorrorStories came to an end. And I’ve never run a convention game, so I haven’t experienced that flavor of a would-be Edgelord looking to ruin other people’s enjoyment for their adolescent power fantasies.
No doubt a bit of both. Clashing styles is certainly a thing — I know other gamers whom I’m pretty sure wouldn’t fit in my group, nor I in theirs — but I suspect that much of it is people who just enjoy being obnoxious.
It’s the same attitude that sees some people acting the same way online… a feeling of anonymity, of freedom from consequences.
I’ve never used specific x-card rules, my games have almost always been with friends, but even then there’s always been a “these subjects will be fade-to-black please let me know if anything needs to be added to that list even if we’re mid play” as well as you know someone, it can be hard to know where exactly the line is and stuff can come up unexpectedly, like we’re friends so we talk to each other
but then X-card stuff became more known and it was just we basically already do that
I wonder what the difference is between, “Ask to pause,” and seeing the X-Card on the table? That little card seems to cast a long shadow over discussions of safety tools. It’s physical presence is (in theory) supposed to remind people that they can “stop the ride” at any point. But it makes me wonder if the sight of the carD implies NEGATIVE THINGS LIKELY TO HAPPEN on a subconscious level?
I began including Action Points in all of my games to try to avert these same sorts of problems. There have been times when other DMs in our group have railroaded the entire party into a TPK because one player wanted to retire his character “in style.” I’ve also witnessed 5/6 PCs treat an escort mission as “I throw a dwarf at it,” arguing that since delivering even one of their honor guard to his destination counted as a successful completion of the mission, then the other six miners were cannon fodder to be used at their discretion.
In contrast, I’ve seen a table full of people throw their AP at me to prevent a “disposable” character’s death or injury to a dog (the bard’s familiar), and groups will frequently toss beads to each other to avert death or the indignity of a “1” during combat.
With my regular gaming group, I know them well enough to know that while they will describe their methods of torturing information from NPCs in great detail, they prefer to simply “return from commercial as Kirk is pulling up his boots” in the unlikely event that anything boudoir-related occurs in game.
Walk me through the Action Points system. How do they act as a safety tool? And what happens if you’re out of Action Points and still want to bang on that X-Card?
As a reaction-based system, it’s proven handy to avert/undo instant character death (whether tragic, the result of poor decisions, or bad rolls) and accidental dice-determined violation of the “No Dead Dogs” unwritten rule.
Even more rarely, it has served to curtail a description of a scene that was getting too descriptive for a player’s sensibilities.
DM: (in the midst of a particularly florid description of results of a monstrous rampage)
Player: (Tosses bead) “Ugh. Really?! Is that necessary?”
DM: (considers a moment, consults notes) “Wow. This place was trashed by experts. You detect no survivors, but there is this cryptic note I am now handing to the cleric.”
Player: “See? Was that so hard?”
As for having no beads when you wish the DM would hop back on the “safe” side of the line or just draw the veil (usually a case of my failure to read the table correctly), it just hasn’t happened yet. Everybody gets one bead at the start of the evening and gets another for any NATURAL 20, really good RP, or clever idea that deserves an immediate reward. Also, (though it would make certain never-played prestige classes redundant) they can use the points on each other’s behalf freely.
Well this is a fun one. I have played in several adult games as well as regular games at a lot cal game shop and honestly i feel the adult only games do a lot better woth limits and whatnot. Everything is laid out at session zero as well as everyones hard limits and there isnt any shame or stigma in saying this scene needs to end. Where as my local gameshop games half the time there isnt even a session zero and several of my shadowrun sessions turned to some just plain messed up shit out of nowhere. I have never heard of X cards before this but i honestly like the odea since having that visual or something small to hand over silently is often easier for someone who is just very shut down by something.
“Adult games” as in sexually explicit ones? Makes sense to me. There’s a culture of safety in the BDSM community that doesn’t carry the same macho “don’t be a wuss” stigma as adventure gaming.
In my experience, people who dismiss safety tools do it because it’s a crutch for real conversation, and if you have a problem you should just say it to the person’s face. Which, to me, is a take that implies a high level of social confidence but a low level of social awareness.
But let me tell a story. I’ve been running a game for some close friends for a long time. We didn’t have a Session Zero, because we didn’t know what that was at the time, but I did regularly check in with people to see how they felt about the campaign. And it worked, mostly.
But then one day, I as the GM put a PC in an Uncomfortable Situation that doesn’t bear repeating. And we all rolled with it, and we made the best of it, but it instantly killed the mood. It was only much later that we talked about it and agreed that it shouldn’t have happened. When you’re starting out, when you don’t have any tools to deal with situations like that, when there’s been no precedent for talking back to the GM, what are you supposed to do? If my own best friends can’t disrupt the game to tell me that I messed up, how is a newbie at a stranger’s table supposed to do it?
That’s why, in my opinion, safety tools like X-cards aren’t about the cards themselves. They’re about introducing the very concept of standing up for yourself in a bad situation, and the promise that doing so is a legitimate part of the game instead of you going against the flow.
Well bloody said. The problem is that I don’t know how to communicate that to a “socially confident but socially unaware” person without raising a defensive response.
Maybe the key is some ultra-short, genericized version of your story? It’s pretty close as-is…. Imagine if something similar were printed on the back of the X-Card itself?
My groups have all tended toward adult players. I’ve only had one that had kids in it and since their dad was playing too, it was easy to keep it clean.
I’ll let the players take the “sex” part through the seduction phase, but after that it’s, “the apple dropped through so many floors” to cover the coitus phase. As to DM’s who have rape, torture, etc. in their games…that will never be me. I firmly believe those things have no place in tabletop gaming. If that’s your kink, keep it to yourself.
This is one of those times that being a controlling DM comes in handy. I don’t need safety cards simply because I will NOT allow that crap in any game I’m running and will either shut it down or leave if it happens in a game I’m playing in. I’m far from a prude, but that sort of crap has no place in gaming. I don’t care that the “story” requires it. Rewrite the damn thing.
The… the what now???
A euphemism for how well the encounter went. You roll an 01 (percentile) and the apple bounced off the bed and rolled out the door. A 00, the apple went through all the floors and embedded itself in the basement floor and you now have your bed partner attached to you because they know they will never find anyone else who will give them so much pleasure. Which can lead to all sorts of interesting storylines for that character. 🙂
I hope I’m not being belligerent, but this sounds like you—or rather your groups—could benefit from some sort of safety tools, all the same. Not the during-play ones, but stuff that sets limits or acceptable bounds ahead of time. (Although simple discussion beforehand isn’t exactly a tool, really.)
If people knew you would refuse to play in a game with [X thing] beforehand, they would (hopefully) be much less likely to try and bring that up in play, I should think. And then you wouldn’t have to forcibly steer things back on track, or leave the game—unless you do mention that, and these are just thoroughly bad eggs?
Also, on a purely personal opinion note, it’s a pretty alien idea to me that certain things just… don’t belong in tabletop gaming at all, whatsoever. Am I misreading you, or do you think even in groups where everyone enjoys the inclusion of a certain kind of nasty business, like torture, that subject doesn’t belong? (Obviously, you don’t have to give me the time of day—your prerogative is your prerogative. But I’m curious, if you don’t mind sharing.)
I don’t mind things like torture as long as it’s done off screen, i.e., “You spend hours before the spy breaks, but you get the information”. Rape, deliberately killing innocents, slavery as anything but something the characters are trying to close down, homophobia or racism, anything that is geared to the abuse of children is off the table. Don’t even bring it up. If you’re a player in one of my games and try that crap, you’ll get one and only one warning, then you’ll be kicked out of any games I run.
If a DM allows that crap, then as soon as I find out I’m out of there. If I find out before I start, all the better.
I’m a huge fan of safety tools! I like the X card and I put together a consent form for my current Lancer game (which I’m really glad I did, because some stuff came up that I hadn’t expected and could have been a problem if I didn’t know to plan around it!)
I’ve only had one situation where we had to do a pivot, as a player in a game with a long term group. We had a moment of PvP between my rogue and the party sorcerer (who asked me first if I was okay with it, and the game was very PvP vibes), and at one point the sorcerer described a particularly gruesome attempted-attack, which another player had a sudden squick reaction to that had them leave the call foe a moment. After we checked in on them, we went back and changed the description of the attack. It worked out and everybody was super supportive of them, but it’s always rough to find out something you have a problem with mid-session. We added it to the list of things we avoid, and added some extra safety tools.
Very cool! Any chance you’d be willing to share your form?
I’d also be curious to hear what the additional safety tool was after the squick-attack incident.
Sure! I’ll make a copy of it.
Before this happened, we hadn’t instituted ay x-cards / safeword system, although we had gone over lines and veils, so we added that particular type of injury to our lines and started using a green/yellow/red system (since not all of us were on camera for x-card showing).
Here’s a link to a copy of the form!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfJlI0fZOlLeRlXaAT7htMC70lizc1aFFJwy0MKhGI100gGWw/viewform
Shit son… That is a THOROUGH session zero. Well done.
I especially like the notes section so that people can voice particular concerns.
Thank you!! A lot of it is pulled from various sources, but I worked hard to make something that I felt was pretty comprehensive while still not too complicated to fill out or reference
I haven’t used them, mainly because I don’t normally play with people I don’t otherwise know fairly well. To the degree that safety tools are often put forward as a means of dealing with situations that a play didn’t expect and isn’t really in a position to talk about, that has never really come up in a game that I’ve run… people have been able to articulate a need to dial something back or skip over something.
In my experience safety tools are becoming something of the new buzzword in games (which, like anything else, can be faddish), and I’ve seen “player safety” invoked as a reason to avoid what is otherwise (and always has been) simply bad practice in gaming, such as having a game turn player-vs-player without telling all of the players beforehand, and getting buy in.
Fair. But in my mind it’s a “better to have ’em and not need ’em” sort of situation. These are things that might actually come up only a handful of times in an entire gaming career, after all. YMMV of course. 🙂
Honestly, I likely would have used them off and on in high school and college. Hormones can lead to some pretty wild (and violent) power fantasies, especially the sexual kind. But as an adult, the idea of playing with someone who is so traumatized by some past events that they can’t even say “hey, this is starting to bother me” seems frankly risky. I know just enough about human psychology to understand that I’m not competent to facilitate a genuinely therapeutic environment for someone who has difficulty working through their problems.
It’s interesting that this discussion never gets into the opposite situation. I was the victim (and I mean that) of an overly controlling household that strictly regulated what I could and could not see for my own “safety.” I understand people have trauma or are otherwise unable to deal with various things, but it has always perturbed me that I have actual life long trauma from this and I’m expected to perpetuate it on everyone’s behalf. From my own PoV, that’s pretty fracked up.
Now with that said, I don’t want to trigger people, so I do ask in session zero if anyone has a problem with any sort of content that might arise and I maintain a file of people’s ‘please no’ things. But I also stipulate that while I am not going to make the whole game about any of those things, versions of most anything you can think of MAY show up. I do make it a point to warn people ahead of session if there’s going to be anything that’s on their list or that I think is close to it.
The worst situation I’ve ever had is someone didn’t tell me about a trigger, and while I was busy sharpening my description skills from having watched too much anime, this person told me they had an issue with graphic descriptions of physical trauma. Which fair enough-but when I go out of my way to ask, YOU GOTTA SAY SOMETHING.
” Which fair enough-but when I go out of my way to ask, YOU GOTTA SAY SOMETHING.”
This, I think is one of the downsides of the way that safety tools are often spoken of and implemented. Since they allow people to request content changes at any time and for any reason, people understand that they don’t have to say anything. They can simply invoke a safety tool if/when something bothers them. And while I understand why someone might want to work that way, I understand why many people find it frustrating. (There have also been some situations in which it causes more problems than it solves.)
I can see how the connotations would bother you. I think the big difference here is that you get a say. These are things that you ask for for yourself rather than being thrust upon you “for your own good.”
I think where the big pushback on lines/veils lies with the default assumption many people make that the lines/veils checklist is their own personal line-item veto that the DM is then contractually bound to run their games under.
Lines and veils are the same as any session 0. It gives you a platform in which to express your hopes and expectations so that a conversation can be had between other players and the DM. I’ve had people put “plague” as one of their “lines” not so much that it was any sort of triggering situation, but since it was during covid lockdowns, they didn’t want to have to deal with ham-handed parallels to real life being injected into it.
Now if you’re running a campaign based on the original Neverwinter Nights PC game, well that’s not exactly going to be feasible; the story literally hinges on a plague being deliberately spread through the city.
At that point, you enter the negotiating phase. Is this something you genuinely wont have fun with, or are their specific things that can be avoided to still allow the general topic to be used.
One player had arachnophobia, but we eventually hashed out that we could still use spiders in the game as long as the details didn’t become graphic and were kept mainly to mechanical game terms.
Another player put down enchantment spells being removed from the game, which I opposed, as he wanted everything from dominate down to suggestion and charm off the table, not just in terms of what NPCs would use on him, but in terms of what fellow players would be allowed to use. This eventually led to me leaving the game, because I was not having fun with my play being restricted in that way.
It still would have been just as legitimate for him to leave instead, since he was the only one who had this issue, and I think it’s this part that frustrates people. There is this unspoken undercurrent that if you don’t bend over to accommodate what is requested in a line/veil checklist, then you are being insensitive, and a bad or even bigoted player by not making those accommodations, even if that would require sacrificing your own fun for theirs.
As long as everyone understands that nobody’s right to have fun in a D&D game takes priority over anyone else’s right, then the lines/veils is a great tool for streamlining expectations and understanding of each other, which will pretty much always result in a more fun game period.
And in situations where a compromise can’t be made, at the very least you (or whoever ends up leaving) wont have wasted time playing a game of D&D that makes them miserable.
Especially with trauma, *people don’t always communicate everything about them,* so I feel the “oh just communicate” thing a lot of people “compromise” with is a cop-out. Not everyone’s good at communication, and that’s not their fault. Not to mention, especially with harder topics, it’s impossible to just casually drop it.
The worst thing you can do is ignore these hard lines for any reason, especially as a DM. By definition, your hands are not tied. You can work around whatever it is. If you’re not willing to change your story or descriptions for a player’s comfort, or at the *very* least warn them beforehand, you are at fault.
“X Cards” have no place at my table or any table I’ll site at. A group is about trust and the social contract, if you can’t trust me enough as a GM or as a fellow Player to let me know when you’re encountering something that makes you too uncomfortable to continue the game, you or I need to be at another table.
It can be a side conversation, it can be after or before game, or even via email or text if you don’t trust the others at the table*.
But it’s a bout trust. I trust my Players to speak for themselves and their Characters, they need to trust me not make the game hurtful to them.
.* And if you can’t trust the other Players, why are you at that table with them?
Now, the above said, if I had someone come to my table with extreme emotional or social communication issue for whom a “NO THIS NEEDS TO STOP NOW” card was necessary, and we as a group were making space for them, that’s different. But that’s a Session Zero Social Contract we’ve entered, they have //trusted// us enough to let us know what issues might be coming so we can avoid those pitfalls and we understand that new issues can arise at any time.
Have I had these moments in my games? Yes, I’ve had people lose it at LARPs (I’ve been known to run some dark horror LARPs) and I’ve even found my limits through game as well.
Heck I once had a GM pull me aside after a sessions and ask if I, the Player, was having issues with the dark turn the game had taken because my Character had become extremely reticent about partaking of the ‘activities’ other PCs were engaging in with abandon (to the extent of urging a few other PCs to split the party and complete separate tasks that didn’t involve the those activities). My response was “No, I’m fine, my Character simply doesn’t enjoy that nonsense and as I’ve† argued, it’s a detriment to our goals.”
.† We were playing ‘ourselves’ in a game of “Immortal: The Invisible War”, so when some of your fellow PC start committing ‘rather depraved’ acts, well… that makes you wonder what darkness they’re ready to commit to if given the chance. And yes when I answered “my Character” the GM had that moment of realization that we (the Players) probably weren’t really playing “ourselves” but highly fictionalized versions… especially with the depravities. The game eventually fell apart when we (a ten player group) split into three hard factions and our Characters were prepared to commit war upon each other to realize our factional goals (or in my faction’s case, to split from them and not be part of their terrible nonsense).
X-Cards aren’t the only safety tool. If they’re the wrong fit for the group, and if you’d prefer something like the consent checklist on Session Zero…
https://www.belloflostsouls.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/consent-checklist.jpg
…There’s nothing wrong with that. The only issue is that these are preventative rather than corrective.
I guess you’ve latched onto the X-Card as visible symbol of “I don’t trust you.” I suppose I could see how it would trigger your response.
Think about the implications of your “side-conversation” alternative though. The safety measure you propose amounts to, “Take me aside and explain in private why you don’t want to deal with [insert traumatic thing] at the gaming table.” Communication is a generally a good thing, but forcing that interaction on people seems like a poor substitute for, “Ask us to pause. You can explain yourself or not.” It also fails to offer any help in real time, forcing you to ride out the objectionable part of the session.
In fairness to you, I don’t like the formality or awkwardness of the X-Card either. But I do think there’s a place for it. Especially since there’s a pretty harsh judgement implied by, “Just talk it out like an adult. If you don’t want to share the worst moments of your life with your casual gaming group, that means you have an extreme emotional or social communication issue.”
RPGs are primarily communication games (nope, not going to talk about tactics ‘wargame’ simulations or the build crunch side of rpgs, we’re focusing solely on communication). As such, it’s incumbent on the person with communication issues to find solutions that with their group or find a group that can work within the framework of their limitations.
To this end… I do not use a ‘checklist’ per se, but during Pre-Session Zero I do discuss what the themes of the game are and if I think there might be issues, I will directly address them and ask if there are any specifics people need or just want to have avoided.
But beyond that? I expect my Players to trust me enough to let me know when something goes too far, or strays into areas they didn’t realize were that uncomfortable. And I trust them to tell me when something is wrong, and to help me work a way around or past it so game can continue.
It’s the “you don’t have to talk about it”, the stoppage and implicit denial of communication that I strongly dislike about X Cards. Call it my autism flaring up, but the very idea of not communicating useful information to avoid further trauma is anathema to me.
I’ve never really been fond of the X-card system, but at the same time, I haven’t quite worked out a good alternative yet. That said, for the most part, it’s a moot point as in almost all of my games I’ve been running online lately, thus a simple PM accomplishes the same result.
Also, while I have never seen that RPG Consent Checklist you linked in one of the replies, I did basically stumble upon the same idea for my Shadowrun game. Basically, I ended up writing a multi-paragraph long disclaimer covering what I expect to be in the campaign, how we plan on handling the content, and to please privately message myself or my co-gm should we make a player uncomfortable.
After a disastrous experience in Uni where one of my players had a full-on panic attack I now include in pre-game stuff a list of off-limits topics supplied by me and the players, and (because all of my GMing is online) two roll20 macros – Nope, which stops the game dead, and Time Out, which lets a player step away and the rest of us carry on, or not if we decide we want to wait.
I also try to list the feel of the game and any potentially nasty things I expect to come up, so my players are forewarned and if they don’t want to play grim dark with graphic violence they aren’t taken by surprise.
It’s broadly worked! I won’t GM without it, because aforementioned panic attack in the middle of a session was awful for everyone involved including me.
It wasn’t too long ago that roll20 updated to include a Safety Deck. It’s automatically added to each game and is located under “Collections”. It’s a standard stop light. Green – Keep Going, Yellow – Slow Down, and Red – Stop. Maybe you can make use of it?
I did not know that! Thanks!
I don’t know if I will use it, though, the ones I have are taoilored to my players needs and include the ‘I want to step away but you guys keep going’ one, which is very useful for the socially anxious who need time out but worry about disrupting the game.
It’s cool it’s there though.
My first experience with safety cards was actually when my daughter got to play No Thank You, Evil years ago. If something comes up that a player doesn’t like, they can say “No thank you, evil” and the Guide resolves/skips the scene.
I wish I knew about safety cards / x-cards years ago though. My wife almost walked out of a game after her character was sexually assaulted by demon. Same GM, much later, wanted to roleplay my barbarian interacting the prostitute that had been hired for him. I quickly shot that down and told the GM to move on. We no longer game together.
While it hasn’t been required in the groups that I’ve been a part of, I think the use of a session 0 to set basic expectations, boundaries, and other general rules is a great tool to avoid problems in the future. I think a lot of GMs would definitely benefit from having these sessions, if only to make sure ahead of time that these are definitely the players that they want to spend so much time and effort on. Likewise on the players’ side, it makes sure that the GM and other players are aware of their limits and (hopefully) that uncomfortable situations like the one Necromancer finds herself in.
While I have heard of a couple of cases where X cards are overutilized, it’s far better to have the tools available for players than to not have them. In any case, it’s better for there to be clear expectations between GM and players on what is allowed at the table.
So, I think the pushback against consent in gaming provides some very weak arguments, many of which I’ve seen repeated here. I actually do agree that these consent tools can be used by certain players to try to monopolize or control the table (or worse yet, by the GM/MC/Storyteller/DM etc.), but that kind of behavior is liable to rear it’s ugly head one way or another if there’s a problem player at the table.
Speaking from recent experience, I’ve been running a game with players who I deeply trust and who trust me as well. We’ve got great rapport and communication. In a recent session, I triggered a player very badly with a scene that honestly wouldn’t bother most people. I had no idea whatsoever that it would have been an issue to them, but it was so bad they nearly had to leave the call. We had the X-Card in place. They had just forgotten that after many years of play. I only learned really after the session what happened.
So here’s a few of the main arguments I’ve seen (and my rebuttals):
“Consent in gaming is a one-size fits all solution that doesn’t fit my table” – Nope, most tools are pretty explicit you should do what works best for your table. There’s no one right answer, but having tools available may become critical.
“Just communicate like an adult!” – I’m incredibly good at knowing my boundaries and saying no. Not everyone is, and plenty of people that are assumed to be “totally okay” with what’s happening may well be suffering silently.
“We agreed in advance what was and wasn’t cool in Session 0/ This adventure is about X, they should have known” Consent changes. Sometimes you’re fine with something at the time but become uncomfortable later.
“These tools discourage conversation” No, they don’t require it. Sometimes a person wants to talk about what’s bothering them, and sometimes they won’t. The difference is they don’t have to defend themselves – this makes speaking up as easy and socially acceptable as possible, because for some people it isn’t.
“This is only for groups of strangers” Again, not the case. I thought I was fine with my group until it wasn’t fine. You don’t want to put someone in that position, in fact, you may not even notice. Most people just stay in the scene and suffer the discomfort. Maybe your group is different. Better safe than sorry.
Again, a lot of these arguments put the impetus on the person who is uncomfortable or triggered. The opposite should the case – make it as easy as possible for someone in that position to speak up.
Yeah, nobody should ever have to confront adversity IRL or at the gaming table. That’s what builds healthy individuals!
Ah yes, thank you for that – It’s such a bad faith, strawman argument that I hadn’t thought to include it.
“Yeah, nobody should ever have to confront adversity IRL or at the gaming table. That’s what builds healthy individuals!” Or “These poor special snowflakes can’t take a joke, etc.” –
Admittedly, tables may vary (some groups may enjoy good-natured ribbing, although even that can cross the boundaries without you noticing). But in my experience, most people come to the gaming table to enjoy themselves, having dealt with enough adversity in their lives outside and having very little interest in being forced to face a toxic environment while pursuing their hobby. Of course, this same flimsy argument is used to justify antisocial behavior outside of the hobby, but that’s its own can of worms.
As previously noted, I’m very good at knowing my boundaries and telling people no. It comes to me naturally. But for some people, it just doesn’t. And giving them the tools the set their own boundaries and practice it in a safe and supportive setting?
You’re right. That is what builds healthy individuals!
(Oh yeah, and most of these people deal with a *lot* of adversity in their day to day lives. Much of which caused by people who make the aforementioned “special snowflakes” argument.)