The Issue With Safety Tools

[@beowylfen]

Man we gotta axe the Troll, Mermaid and Pitchfork scene? Wjy are we even playing FATAL

[@zigmenthotep]

The difference is, in FATAL those are the player characters.... also like 16 rolls in every bleep.

[@beowylfen]

@@zigmenthotep lmfao fair enough

[@s.a.l.1974]

@@zigmenthotep and no Mermaids

[@angrytheclown801]

If you're in a group that pulls out FATAL you're already made a tragic mistake.

[@drjohnwooberg]

Wow, that Walking Dead section is so bad. “Here’s a bunch of terms. Do these mean anything to you? If so, you probably already know what to do. If not, look it up online.”

[@zigmenthotep]

I mean... it was bad enough to inspire an entire video.

[@willardplaysgames6060]

>tone Perfect way to talk about limits without asking people "what are your limits?" I prefer to tell my table to expect a PG adventure that expands in topic as we get to know each other. >talking about feelings 100%. Many men I've had at my gamw table have had private conversations with me later about loneliness and friendship. Ice must be broken. Good vid, thanks for sharing.

[@SusCalvin]

You will play Delta Green. It is older Chaosium with a lot of practical investigation. It is part action adventure but that is the end of big investigations. Half of you should play federal police.

[@keyboardstalker4784]

I’m not at the table for group therapy, I’m there to play a game. I can’t imagine being expected to bring my real life problems into a hobby that’s meant to be a temporary reprieve from those problems. I also can’t imagine getting traumatized by some dumb shit that happens in game.

[@SusCalvin]

@@keyboardstalker4784 It would be hard to tell my mates to leave their ADHD at home or pretend they have not been on call for a two-day shift when they show up. Or whatever nonsense that got me this month. Scheduling is maybe the largest workload here. Some of the blokes need to pick up their kids and I can't very well tell them "Ignore your kids today" but it's not an insurmountable issue.

[@keyboardstalker4784]

@@SusCalvin Besides the ADHD, all of those things are scheduling conflicts, and none of them require talking about your feelings to resolve. And if they’re going to be using ADHD as an excuse to spend the whole game looking at their phone, yeah you can tell them to leave that at home.

[@enuma-elise]

​​@@keyboardstalker4784 these tools aren't to stop people "getting traumatized," they're to prevent stepping on buttons from already existing trauma. For the same reason you don't set off firecrackers at your veteran friend's birthday party without asking him if it's ok, you don't spring a rape scene on a player who has been raped in real life without asking if it's ok. Having that conversation before the game starts is the easiest way to deal with that.

[@PassGoGames]

Me, as a 53 year old guy coming into this video, who hasn't played for a few years: what the hell are safety tools? Me, after watching the video: Oh, it's the conversation I've always had before DM'ing a game.

[@Schadrach42]

It can just be the usual session 0 stuff that every halfway decent GM has had with their players for decades upon decades, but there are other things that have come into vogue in recent years. Like X cards, which basically just give players a silent no-questions-asked veto of anything and everything.

[@nabra97]

Good on you (unironically)! The idea that you can say if some in-game topics are deeply unsettling to you and that other players should respect that is pretty new to my local community, and I feel like it's not a standard for a lot of people elsewhere

[@canalsincontenido]

A big issue with safety tools is that they can go from unhelpful to damaging. Asking the person having anxiety to stop the game and inform everyone that they are having an anxiety attack simply won't happen. Even worse, you are putting the ball on their field. Now it's the victim's fault for not stopping it, something they could had done without an X Card if they were able to. I filled a list of things we were fine and not fine with once. It soundsd like a solid tool because it was a long mix of stuff, so you weren't really showing whether it was a personal experience or just a matter of taste. Then the GM went through them person by person asking for details. I'm sure the dude meant the best, he wanted granularity or something, I lied. I wasn't gonna give some dude the means to emotionally hurt me, I'm not opening up to some fuck I barely know. I'd rather have a bad session where I close off than to have someone knowing that much about me on the long run.

[@porkers7792]

I feel Session 0 is so vital to TTRPG's, and most mitigate the need for in-game safety tools down the line. Session zeroes and Re-zeros are super important. Communication!

[@Ishpeck]

I think there are a lot of implied boundaries baked into some system choices. If you're playing Pathfinder or GURPS, these adult conversations are necessary but I'm pretty sure saying "let's play Dinosaur Erotica but have no sex in it" as a farcical notion of safety.

[@nabra97]

You need to know (and make sure everyone knows) what are you playing though. Something with the name Dinosaur Erotica just speaks for itself, of course, but, for example, it was quite a thing (at least in post-soviet countries) a few years ago with offering people to play Vampires the Masquerade without explaining what the game was about (I guess the idea was to make players as confused as their characters should have been); I mean, playing it without much regards to personal horror is not that weird, but by default it touches some pretty dark matters.

[@nabra97]

One idea I didn't think about before is that it's not always a one-directional spectrum. For example, some people are more uncomfortable with implied violence where their PCs are spectators than with something more graphic and more involved, because the former may feel more realistic. To specify: if you can't make it work - of course, you don't have to, just be upfront and respectful about it. I'm just pointing out that it's a thing, and it probably isn't that rare

[@SusCalvin]

Some OSR adventures can be full guignol horrorshows down in some weird hellpit. One thing I noticed with kids is that they hate being out of the game. I can have their attention for 30 minutes or two hours depending on age, but that drops fast when they're told they need to sit things out. They don't mind getting their PCs killed as long as they know they can be back in the game with a new stooge.

[@nabra97]

@@SusCalvin maybe it's a separate thing with kids (I don't have my own and never worked with any), but I can understand it just in general. If my character's life expectancy is half an hour, it's OK, but don't expect me to put any thoughts or emotions into them; one of the reasons I don't think I could possibly like "Ten Candles"-like games

[@SusCalvin]

@@nabra97 OSR focus a bit more on the practical problems at hand and how you as players can outwit some weird place. Your ideas don't stop just because your current bum dies.

[@jondw]

reminds me how my group have been setting up a fallout based campaign and our DM mentioned plans to make a playlist of music to have on the "radio" since that is such a major part of the feel of the game and a player mentioned how they have bad associations with new vegas' songs so (until schedule issues pulled them away from the group) our radio wouldn't include new vegas music. or we were playing a looser champagin so I wanted to try an character idea that was technically evil, so I asked if it was ok before actually building the character with it clear that I had alternative ideas if not.

[@SusCalvin]

Most dungeonering games assume player cooperation. The world is gnarly enough without drama between the PCs and players. The players must understand this, usually you outright tell them.

[@stephenkramer7157]

I was waiting until the next campaign I run to put out the RPG consent form... but now that I think about it, there is literally no reason not to do that in the middle of a campaign.

[@chiragasnani3437]

Great video, but extra emphasis on your choice of relaxing jazz background music, top notch!

[@CommissarMitch]

My group have a very simple safety tool: At any point, for any reason, any one of us can say "Veto" and the current line of discussion or description is dropped on the spot. Everyone move on from there.

[@CommissarMitch]

We all know that this is the extreme case and because we all have broadly similar yucks we tend to keep things civil.

[@toxicscarecrow1633]

Ironically KULT has some of the best safety tools imo. Yes, kult gets dark. But they make it suuuuuuper clear what the players are in for

[@keegancooke6438]

Is it really that big of a problem or I am blind to it? As I have never felt the need to use any of these tools? Or are my games like super normy.

[@mrksimka1159]

No it's just means you and your players are well adjusted adults who don't need safety training wheels and you all cool with each other bs, separating fiction from reality and can deal with out of pocket adult topics in life.

[@Anondod]

In my experience, safety tools aren't generally needed in groups where everyone has played together for a long time and the tone and topics are well-established. However, when you play with strangers or people you just haven't played with before, they can be a great help.

[@stm7810]

I don't know your games but can't say, this is in a big part for people with PTSD, CPTSD or other situations where there are distressing topics, or just a thing in their life that's impacted. like how people can't handle a dog dying in media, or don't want sex scenes.

[@nabra97]

Just out of curiosity, did you never use special tools, or did you never have any discussion about limits whatsoever? I don't see why the majority of tables would need special tools (they definitely have their place though), but if you never even discussed what would be in the game, probably either your games really are super normy, or you just know each other well out of the game (well, I hope that it's not some of the players not liking the game but staying silent)

[@mrksimka1159]

@@nabra97 I think I answered this question by my own comment already. Assuming it’s visible knowing YT.

[@MichaelSollienmusic]

It seems to me that Free League may be hesitant to include safety tools in their games, partly due to a reluctance in Europe to adopt what are seen as primarily American cultural standards. In general, we tend to have a higher tolerance for challenging content-swearing and nudity, for example, are not typically censored on European television. However, since their game is based on an American TV show, they likely felt obligated to include some form of safety tools. Striking the right balance here is tricky. While it's not entirely the game’s responsibility to enforce respectful behavior among players, there are cases where the game’s darker themes demand a little extra sensitivity. Kult: Divinity Lost handled this well, in my view, by creating safety tools specifically tailored to its content, rather than using the standard ones seen in other games.

[@stm7810]

Yes, it is part of the whole theme setting, is this cinematic, is there magic, what level magery is allowed, how many character points you get, these start to overlap with triggers, mental health and stuff. For example 1 friend doesn't like excessive pain or any gore or blood, so we got rid of stun and shock rules don't use bleeding, have crippled limbs be fixed over a nights rest, just representing them having difficulty with the part rather than a visible wound, don't use the neck, eyes or groin hit location and unless an enemy is particularly evil they were just knocked out by the sheriff so he can arrest or interogate later. another game a plural system we knew didn't want mind control or manipulation so we made sure the setting could avoid that with different plots and stuff instead. heck in 1 setting death even for players was replaced with 2 weeks of being out of commission so they have to use their back up character since people were emotionally attached and it was based on a kids show.

[@elowin1691]

Unfortunately I find a lot of players either don't know, can't think of or simply aren't interested in even thinking about what lines they aren't comfortable with crossing before it comes up. Also gotta say it's kind of insensitive to just say "basic communication skills" are "not that hard" when this is a hobby that attracts a pretty large amount of neurodivergent people.

[@aofdoom5030]

I mean from my experience as an autistic person its neurotypicals who struggle with just honestly talking something out. Just openly saying exactly what you feel is so much more accessible for me than relying on arcane cues.

[@AngloSaxonWheatFarmer]

I disagree, we shouldn’t put aside the value of just an open an honest adult conversation about something just because autistic people are present. Because you know even if they struggle with it we shouldn’t just assume they don’t want to do that either

[@atlascove1810]

We're not babies, though.

[@drachenkeks42]

Safety First.

[@miscprojects9662]

The game is fine. The players are toxic.

[@JMcMillen]

Exactly. In the past, GM's and players had the good sense to not take the game in certain directions unless they were 100% sure that the ENTIRE table was fine with something. And since most people weren't always 100% certain of how the other players might react to an extreme situation, we just didn't go there.

[@ИванСтарцев-й3б]

good vid. 🗿 this topic literally my life now in games I gm'ing currently(group got in kind of chess event, and end up on different sides, and in the middle it's became a problem, cause no one is willing to lose 💀). watching your stuff for several years now, science I've been looking for oWoD/nWoD content, and stuck with pleasure. cheers from Saint-Petersburg❤

[@SusCalvin]

Player conflict is not the norm in OSR dungeoneering and plenty of other games. They assume a PCs against the world style. Mind controlled or cyberpsychotic PCs are temporary NPCs the DM uses as an impartial judicator. I can grab a Charmed PC and have them block the other PCs by a door.

[@stm7810]

I'm perfectly fine committing to what the dice say, if my character loses then that's fair, especially if I didn't put much into games (chess) or overall Intelligence. also for how my character would feel. I have 1 character who due to a duty to not hurt their friends would throw any match in a tournament arc against them, or at most only target their weapon. another though is 12 years old so is very competitive and would probably spend character points on the build up for the event to gain specific counters, like resistance or immunity to an effect another PC uses.