I think no currently available technique of preemptive identification is reliable to a useful degree. A player with a 'no go zone' should always bring it up before joining a campaign if desiring the topic to be avoided. Because people are not precognitive telepaths.
(Bringing it up once it already happened is too late, because [a] the topic is now present already and [b] trying to make a sudden turn away from it without prior warning ruins immersion.)
Ideally yes, it would be... convenient if people were proactive about that. Although many people assume that certain topics are out-of-bounds, but those boundaries may vary by culture, context, etc. Or they may be uncomfortable having that discussion in the first place.
That's not a very useful assumption though, given the variety between regions and subcultures.
> Although many people assume that certain topics are out-of-bounds
It may have been reasonable when RPGamers only played and chatted in small localized groups, but in the age when everyone knows 2-3 languages and speaks with foreigners, that's just not a naïveté that is likely to be reasonably expected.
@vicky_molokh I can't provide statistics on how often one might expect a player who are either culturally or socially insensitive and don't realize that their statements can be offensive if not triggering. But I'd rather be safe than sorry - don't assume that the participants are that understanding of diversity/sensitivity/etc.
@MikeQ I'm trying to figure out how the reply relates to my post, and I'm getting an impression we're talking about two very different types of expectations, or are otherwise completely skew lines.
@vicky_molokh Admittedly I'm not very articulate when it comes to these topics. I was trying to address the "everyone knows 2-3 languages and speaks with foreigners" statement about expecting naiete
It's not uncommon in the TTRPG/gaming community to interact with someone from a very homogeneous background, and that person may casually make statements that would otherwise make the table feel less safe for others
But everyone does. Anyone who participates on an Anglophone forum, chat etc. is likely to, at a minimum, know English. And chances are high that at least 50% of those people come from faraway lands.
The chance of meeting someone from the same city is pretty low.
How did we jump from 'people should know that attitudes towards nudity and violence differs between the regions' to a rather culturally-North-Atlantic-centric topic of 'wokeness'?
It's not the right word, sorry. My vocabulary tends to hiccup sometimes.
Whatever is the term for "realizing or not realizing that certain words/suggestions/depictions can create an unsafe environment for members of other groups". That's what I'm trying to get at.
Please stop derailing conversations by nitpicking words that are clear enough in context and not central to the topic at hand.
It's becoming a pattern and makes it difficult for the room to have complex conversations without devolving into quibbling over tangential issues.
If you're not familiar with the experiences we're talking about or there are terms of art you're unaware of, listen in order to learn. Maybe ask some questions instead of announcing that things you're not familiar with are wrong or don't exist.
Rolling back into the topic of being familiar with regional variations. By now, a lot of people know that the Chinese version of World of WarCraft lacks bones, that the German C&C had human soldiers replaced by soldiers, and that the USAian version of Gothic, SiN and many other products had no nudity. These are just some examples. People are constantly exposed to cultural variations in assumptions.
So everyone at least knows that one may be surprised by encountering something one would assume to be out of bounds if one were to only ever chat in a small localised group.
Because by now, people don't restrict themselves to small localised groups in communication.
After reaching the bullet points of the actual technique, I agree that it's an improvement on the X-Card (though made from a more generic PoV, not the author's specific one). (I do still have issues with unconditional undisputable fiat.)
@vicky_molokh On that — supposing something that's come up is uncomfortable enough it's run into someone's no-go zone, immersion should be suspended. Peoples' comfort levels are more important than immersion. We're a bunch of friends sitting down to play a game to have fun together; the game is not more important than us and our safety and comfort.
As an example: suppose I bring an NPC into a game who's a parent of one of the characters, and abusive toward that character. Someone in the group taps the X-card saying they didn't expect this to come up, and weren't prepared to share it, but they suffered abuse as a child from their parent, and this is way too heavy for them to deal with, please let's not have this happen.
We should pause, suspend immersion, and talk together. We should wheel things back and undo that feature of the game. Sure, immersion is compromised, but compromising that person's comfort level is a more important issue than the immersion.
It's also not too late: the game is just a conversion. What's been said can't be un-said, and now we've learned things, but we are fully empowered to now reverse the addition we made to our collaborative story.
"Ok, that never happened. Don't worry about it. Let me rethink this NPC." or "The NPC just walked through the door a few seconds ago, so let's rewind to then, and a different NPC will walk in instead and they'll behave differently."
@doppelgreener Note that the Luxton Technique is probably better to use in this example than the X-Card, because it's probably an issue of genuinely triggering trauma and rewinding "replicates the environment of denial and powerlessness that caused" the trauma in the first place.
The Luxton Technique would give the player in question control over resolving the scene. If rewinding is what they want, sure, but maybe it's more likely to be a healing experience if they get to ensure it plays out with a happy ending or something.
If I tap the X-Card to say I don't like that the GM just introduced cannibalism to the game, rewinding is probably the right choice. But I'm not actually triggered by cannibalism, I'm just squicked out.
@doppelgreener There's more than one person at a table. If I have, as an example, an irrational fear of [X] that results in over-the-top stuff like involuntary full-body movements away from it (there is such a thing for me IRL), and I can't handle it in RPGs, it is my personal responsibility to take measures such as discussing it preemptively with the GM and/or party.
Because the alternative is to one day, when the party sorcerer summons an [X] for a major participation in many scenes, I'll force a choice between ruining one player's day (me, by skipping the scenes or metaphorically gritting teeth) or ruining three people's day (GM and the other players by sudden bans and retcons).
My GM and players are not telepaths.
If I'm the one bringing the baggage to the table, it's my responsibility to at least pack it in a way that it doesn't get in the way of fun.
Luxton is nice in that it emphasises non-telepathy and preemptive discussion.
@Rubiksmoose If it's that bad, then it's my responsibility to warn the others. Just like if one is allergic to peanuts or morphine, one should inform the family one visits or the doctor one visits (respectively).
Basically, if you consider it a clinical-grade issue, treat it with all the seriousness of a clinical-grade issue.
Not every trigger can be predicted or preempted. I take issue more with the fact that you are equating "ruining" people's days with "bans and retcons" and literally ruining someone's day or worse by causing triggers and not addressing it.
> But what do you do when a person doesn't inform about it?
Most likely stop the game and very seriously consider not gaming with that person again. How would you feel if someone put you into a position of unknowingly feeding peanuts to an allergic person? Would you still be friends after such an omission?
A person shouldn't endanger oneself and others by omitting clinical-grade risks.
If it's clinical-grade, then 'I forgot' or 'well I didn't expect that' are rather poor excuses; if it's not clinical-grade, one shouldn't metaphorically pull the train's emergency brakes over it.
Have you noticed how, say, people with diabetes are careful about their problems and make preemptive actions to minimise risks?
Diabetes is something that you deal with every day. A player joining a fantasy game might not even realize there might be content like sexual violence or child abuse, especially if it's a new group they're joining.
This conversation is going to the Not A Bar, where if anyone actually wants to continue it, it can continue where people who don't want it can ignore it.
@kviiri Diabetes is a more constantly-onscreen thing. But e.g. allergies are much more situational, and still people with allergies normally take precautions, plan ahead, and check whether allergens may be present in unlikely situations (I have personal experience with the latter, though it's nothing as dramatic as the examples Hollywood likes to use). Basically it's irresponsible to not look ahead if one is aware of a serious risk.
An emergency brake is good to have, but it's not good to forego precautions and make the brake's use routine.
If a doctor is exposing patients to potential allergens, however uncommon, then it would be responsible to keep epipens and a first aid kit on hand, just in case
Essentially this sounds to me like you expect a person with PTSD to preface every conversation they're about to have with "please don't talk about <trigger> with me", or else it's their fault for "emergency braking".
But it's a responsible thing to do when entering a high-stress, long-term high-immersion situation. Just like it's responsible to mention phobias before entering a horror tunnel and asking the conductor whether it includes such-and-such scares.
Here's the thing, theory and clinical nonsense and false analogies aside: if you ever have a player at your table that you care about and have a heart and you or other friends at the table cause them severe trauma, the only appropriate response is "how can we make this better" "how can we help you" "how can we prevent it from happening again".
RPGs aren't horror tunnels or martial arts matches.
A horror tunnel has horror in its very name. People know they're going to be scared.
Many players have an impression of TTRPG that's essentially "adventuring like in The Lord of the Rings" or "World of Warcraft except it's on pen and paper" or something like that. I dare say those two approximate beginning players fairly well. If their trigger is eg. child abuse, they have no reason to except it.
> only appropriate response is "how can we make this better" "how can we help you" "how can we prevent it from happening again"
I am in fact arguing that one should focus on preventing it from happening in the first place, instead of skipping over that and placing one's hopes in the safety net.
Mental health issues aren't something that have defined and plannable interactions. They can be and often are surprising and unpredictable. Not only that, but some types of trauma combined with certain personalities actually make it extremely difficult for people to talk about or be open with their trauma. Sometimes they don't think it will be an issue. Sometimes they don't want to be a bother. Sometimes they don't even know it is an issue they have.
@vicky_molokh You are literally the only person who has said that this is a thing we are talking about.
I would like to take a moment to remind everyone that this conversation is optional and if you're trying to leave but getting unwanted pings there's an "ignore this user" feature and there's nothing wrong with using it, temporarily or permanently.
I will be leaving now, but it's easy to contact me or a mod if things escalate.
BESW (OK, no more pinging): The X-card is largely focused around emergency brakes and not preemptive measures. The L-tech seems like an improvement (at least from my PoV) in that regard, but isn't a complete shift towards preventing issues in the first place.
To use the (ill-conceived) food allergen comparison, this is like going to a party without intending to eat anything or drink anything, but getting an allergic reaction anyway because the host had sprayed fine-grained peanut dust over the apartment because they thought it smelled nice.
This seems like a primary differences in how we describe RPGs. RPGs are high-responsibility, high-immersion things. It's pretty hard to 'not eat' there when 'eating' involves consuming any and all parts of plot, descriptions, dialogues etc.
But to be honest it seems to me that you're arguing that "if the preparation wasn't enough, it wasn't adequate" which might be true in a strict sense, but is not a reasonable requirement to make of a human being.
That's contrary to the impression I get from at least two of the touched-upon psychological comfort techniques: X-Card, which is almost entirely during-the-game-focused, and the improved but still partially fiat-override-relying-on L-Tech.
My stance is: 1. Preempt problems whenever possible. (A prevention of a problem is better than doing damage control after the fact.) 2. Be honest at least with your GM and possibly with your co-players too. (If something risk ruining the game for you and others, don't mislead others into thinking there's no risk.) 3. Emergency brakes should be used in rare *emergencies*, not to be used lightly.
On 3, I can't really see a likely case where they'd be used lightly... I mean, perhaps in more competitive/gamistic tables where people would veto stuff just because it's disadvantageous to them, but if they're willing to do that I think you'll have bigger problems
again you seem to be assuming that anything unexpected is "misleading" (victim-blame much?) and if your definition of "ruining the game" is unintentionally having a traumatic experience, then you need to evaluate your human compassion.
Moose: There's ruining the scene for others if a cool scene gets stopped and retconned too, but really, ideally both sides of the coin should be prevented.
IOW, it urges me to think of it not as a 'pull cord, break glass, turn the key if you really know what you are doing', but a thing used . . . well, lightly.
I've had games where my lines got crossed, or things became really uncomfortable, but I never expected anything like that to happen. I'm not going to start out a game by airing all my specific issues I might ever have, and I wouldn't expect to be able to articulate and think of them all myself even if I tried.
Elaborating: 'Overwrite any scene, any event, unilaterally and not subject to any discussion or negotiation or *anything' is about as nuclear an option as RPG options get.
Maintaining our comfort zones isn't an emergency scenario, and shouldn't involve potentially expelling a person from future play.
2
Or even a question of doing so: people should feel safe to bring up issues without a looming threat of dire consequences, because otherwise that's the same as people being unable to bring up their issues.
Anyway, I've explained my point as well as I can and I don't really want to spend the best hours of my working day chatting about this. I hope you don't actually ditch friends because of peanut accidents
I'm not radically adverse to maintaining zones of comfort, but trying to do in OOC time, not in the middle of a session/scene/etc., much like, say, rules debates. I'm all for bringing up things; in fact I have issues with the attitude of not bringing up things that are so important.
But OK, back to work, until getting back to non-work of course.
That's a valid outcome of a discussion. We honestly bring up some of our expectations, our worries etc., and see where they collide, and decide to pick a party in which we would have fewer incompatibilities. We are both informed in advance before we make our choices. (Speaking hypothetically - I suspect we'll never end up in the same LFG, let alone in the same party.)
