The latest social media shit storm in RPG-land happened after this free PDF, Consent in Gaming, got released. I saw two types of comments: "This is unnecessary and it's SJW (Social Justice Warrior) overkill." and "Your response is why this is required reading."
I GM and play at various local conventions in the San Francisco Bay Area: KublaCon, DunDraCon, PacifiCon, BigBadCon, Dead of Winter. I also attend various online conventions such as AetherCon and FG Con. The issue is when you're at a table with strangers, you sometimes never know what you're going to get: "Life is a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." - Forrest Gump.
I, for one, have never ran into any issues in my games, but I have heard stories from players and other GMs. I'll talk about that later. So, I understand there is some need for Consent Rules.
KublaCon, DunDraCon, PacifiCon, GenCon, AetherCon, and FG Con have long legacies and are very much old school. Game listings are Title/System/Duration/# players/Description. Most games offered are plot driven published games with familiar systems: D&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, Delta Green, Paranoia, etc. Most of them also offer LARPs. Most people know what to expect when they sign up for a Cthulhu game. If more adult themes are present, then generally, the description would include something like: For Mature Audiences or Adult Themes. Which generally means explicit violence, drugs, swearing, and maybe sex. e.g. R-rated material.
Dead of Winter is an invite only convention. It used to list games old style, but started to add more tags to help describe the game content such as: "Tone: Dark and Gritty full on investigative & psychological horror." This was added because even though DoW is a horror convention, there are various flavors such as Campy Horror or Serious Investigative Horror. This helps Players pick the right game to play in.
BigBadCon is the most leading edge. Games lean toward indie, storytelling, GM-less, player agency, play test. Not your standard plot driven RPG. BigBadCon has borrowed a lot of Safety Tools from LARP games: Safety and Calibration Tools. Five tools are listed and only the X-Card is discussed in Consent in Gaming. When games are posted, which Safety Tools (of the 5) are available during play, Maturity level of the game, Tags about possible triggers in the game, etc are explicitly stated. Basically no unpleasant surprises. If you sign up for My Little Pony RPG, you're not going to run into a Slasher Movie by accident. This is of course an extreme example, but illustrative. It's more likely that someone is signing up for an edgy RPG, but not sure how edgy it'll be. This allows a safety net.
For plot driven, established system and game worlds, just listing the system tells the Players what to expect. Thus I see no problems for those type of games: D&D, CoC, Paranoia. Consent is less likely an issue with those games.
But for storytelling games with great player agency, Players have no control of where the story goes. It is at the whim of another Player.
Let's explore some issues.
1. Cut/Break. See Safety and Calibration Tools for definition.
What is this for? Why hand signals?
In LARPs, sometimes it is hard for a Player to determine if during a scene another Player is crying due to real emotional trauma or that the Player is enjoying the trauma as a Character experiencing the trauma. With hand signals, there is no guess work. And the Player causing the trauma doesn't have to break character, interrupt the scene, and ask, "Are you ok? Is this too intense? Should I continue?" Sort of acting interruptus - "Oh, shit. I was in the zone and in the moment, and now I lost it."
2. It doesn't matter why consent wasn't given. See Consent in Gaming.
Why not?
The problem is that someone may have trauma and talking about it makes them re-experience it. They're already signaling that they're not comfortable with the situation, so by pressing them, you're just bullying them into re-experiencing it. For instance, let's say someone says "Rape" is off the table. I would argue a reasonable adult shouldn't press someone on this, to try to make them justify why having "Rape" in a RPG session makes them uncomfortable.
3. X-Card. See Safety and Calibration Tools for definition or Consent in Gaming.
X-Card can mess up a GM's game. How do you deal with this?
For a storytelling game, where it's a box full of chocolates and you have a fatal peanut allergy, the X-Card will save you if someone hands you the wrong chocolate. And since it's a storytelling game where almost everything is fluid, the game can easily veer away from the subject. Don't eat the chocolate if it'll kill you.
For a plot driven game, I would not allow the X-Card and would go with Open Door Policy. See Safety and Calibration Tools. Sorry, everyone has to eat the chocolate, but you may exit the room.
4. Gender Pronoun Name Tags (He/Him, She/Her, They/Them). See Consent in Gaming.
WTF?
I live in the SF Bay Area, so sometimes you can't tell. Hair, clothing, lifestyle, is sometimes confusing here. The Gender Name Tags just helps with removing confusion.
5. RPG Consent Checklist. See Consent in Gaming.
This seems crazy. Does this give too much power to one Player, allowing them to dictate what would or would not be in the game?
I would agree if the Checklist was abused, but I can see it as a useful tool.
- For a convention game, the GM should, ahead of time, fill out the Consent Checklist to inform potential Players about topics in the game and have it published (or a short version with keywords) with the game listing. If a Player finds something objectionable about the game, they shouldn't sign up for it. How hard is it to include in a game description: "This game is about 1930's Harlem and includes overt racism and race issues." People pay to attend a convention, sometimes pay to get into a game, and have to decide which games to prioritize. Why not get the right Player for the right game?
- For a home campaign, why not go over what Players want and what the GM wants in a session zero? If one Player is totally out of sync with the rest of the Players, then probably that Player shouldn't be in the campaign. The Checklist doesn't have to be filled out, but it can be a basis for discussion. This seems like common sense and best practices to me.
- For a one-shot game, whether convention or at home, and as a GM, you don't feel like filling out the Checklist for whatever reason, there is always the Open Door for any Player that is uncomfortable.
I think the issue that is brought up is that we're all reasonable adults and this isn't necessary. But the problem is that not all GMs and Players are 100% reasonable adults all the time. Even if 0.1% of the time a GM or Player is unreasonable in some way, having the Safety and Calibration Tools available seem like good practice.
Let's look at safety equipment in cars. In California, only on 1986, was it mandatory to wear a seat belt in a moving car. Before 1986, it was optional. People even argued that wearing a seat belt would hurt you in an accident, that it would prevent you from being thrown clear from the car. Today, there are seat belts, airbags, crumple zones, roll bars, automatic breaking, blind spot detection, etc. for car safety.
I have never had a major auto accident and never needed my seat belt, airbag, crumple zones, etc., but I've seen people who have, on the side of the road, as I drove by.
I say these Safety and Calibration Tools are the RPG version of seat belts, airbags, etc. You can decide what you want and what you don't want: seat belt or no seat belt, drive a classic car without airbags or crumple zones, buy a car with automatic breaking, etc.. It's all up to you. But it's good to know that these tools are there and you can choose what you want to use.
I've sometimes offered these Safety and Calibration Tools in convention games and not when I play with people I know. None of these Safety and Calibration Tools were called upon except for once, in my home campaign. One Player gets nightmares from graphic descriptions and only requested that her PC would take SAN loss from horrible sights, but not to describe or show her pictures of anything disturbing. She even had issues with seeing a Skeleton illustration from the D&D Monster Manual. I show pictures to the other Players, but not her; I sometimes tell her to leave the room when describing something; I sometimes just gloss over something gross vs describing something in detail; sometimes I forget and she calls me out on it. This is all very mature and not a big deal to me or the other Players.
The horror stories I've heard, wreckage strewn across the side of the road, are:
1. In a fantasy game, the GM running an NPC went to an upstairs room in a tavern to rape a NPC serving girl. I don't quite remember if a PC was involved in that rape scene. The scene went on for half an hour before two Players, friends of mine, left the table. It was obvious to my friends, the GM was getting off on the scene and this had nothing to do with the overall game. Not your standard D&D game. Would any of the Safety and Calibration Tools work? Maybe. But this convention hadn't codified any of these standards. The only thing my friends could do was leave the table. I spoke to the Convention runner about this several years after the fact and was told that if he had known about this, that GM would have been blacklisted. But without any rules codified, convention attendees didn't know what to do or what was acceptable.
Basically a controversy about game content. Game is sequel to Tales from the Loop, a kids on bikes type of game with a Sci Fi twist. The sequel is Things from the Flood, so it's teenagers who can die. At that time, Things from the Flood was new and people were more familiar with Tales from the Loop. The controversy revolves around the implication that the teens were kidnapped and raped at the start of the game. Players said, "Yes." GM said, "No." GM got banned. Would Safety and Calibration Tools work? If a Consent Checklist was made, maybe it would have helped. I personally think that the GM had a lapse in judgement. He wanted shock value as part of the game and sprung a surprise on the Players. A Consent Checklist would have ruined the surprise and maybe he wouldn't have put that element into his game if he had to put it on a checklist. The result was he got banned and it made the news.
The bigger complaint that I hear of from the majority of the female gamers is not about content, but mainly about mansplaining. They're told they don't know what they're doing, that they are messing up the min/max of the PC, etc. This is even to GMs who have GMed games before the mansplainer was born.
As a side note, I ran a Vampire V5 game at BigBadCon and only listed Open Door Policy as the Safety Tool. BigBadCon offers GMs the choice of hearing feedback from their Players. One Player wrote that she was at first hesitant about the game's content, worried that it'd be too dark, but at the end enjoyed the game greatly. She had to make a leap of faith that the game wouldn't be uncomfortable for her. I assume if I had offered more Safety Tools, it would have assuaged her fears and I was unaware that this was a potential barrier for getting Players to sign up for my game.
As a counter side note, I wanted to run a game about Inmates at an Asylum at BigBadCon this year and it was at first turned down due to issues about perceived messaging. I had to revise my game description in a major way. In one respect, the game description is much clearer as to what a Player would expect, unfortunately, I also had to list all possible things that would be a trigger and the game description makes it look way darker than it is. So, yes, the Consent Checklist can work against you.
If we want to welcome as many diverse Players as possible to our games, by offering Consent, we can assuage their fears and get the right Player for the right game. And even if we don't want to offer Safety and Calibration Tools, by being aware of them, we know we can use them if we have to.
