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08:48, 29th March 2024 (GMT+0)

Consent in Gaming.

Posted by larcen13
larcen13
member, 21 posts
Numenera player
Vampire player
Sun 15 Sep 2019
at 14:42
  • msg #1

Consent in Gaming

Below is a link to Consent in Gaming.  It's a free, 13 page PDF.  Great resource for working with players to create a gaming environment that everyone is comfortable with, so fun can be maximized.

https://www.montecookgames.com/consent-in-gaming/

It also contains additional resources for exploring this topic, as well as a checklist group members can fill out so that triggering topics can be identified before the game even starts.
DaCuseFrog
member, 72 posts
SW Florida
Sun 15 Sep 2019
at 17:22
  • msg #2

Consent in Gaming

I checked it out and want to add a disclaimer.  If you are not currently signed up for an account with them, they expect full name, address and phone number to download this "free" PDF.  It sounds like a wonderful guide, though, and I'd love to read it.
evileeyore
member, 216 posts
GURPS GM and Player
Mon 16 Sep 2019
at 01:45
  • msg #3

Re: Consent in Gaming

DaCuseFrog:
I checked it out and want to add a disclaimer.  If you are not currently signed up for an account with them, they expect full name, address and phone number to download this "free" PDF.

Or just give them fake information, that works fine.

quote:
It sounds like a wonderful guide, though, and I'd love to read it.

It's 12 pages of useless nonsense.  The pictures are excellent though, Mirco Paganessi is a great artist.
tibiotarsus
member, 70 posts
Hopepunk with a shovel
Mon 16 Sep 2019
at 07:33
  • msg #4

Re: Consent in Gaming

I'd imagine it works all right for face to face play, if it's like the PbtA set on the subject. Both oblivious gamer cruelty and accidental overshare due to the temptation towards brinkmanship with trauma in an imaginative environment are genuine issues in gaming. No-one particularly wants to end up playing a therapy or torture session rather than a game, after all.

Problems with that sort of thing arise when it comes to online or other stranger gaming, however: you're asking people who may have any sort of trauma to say something to a random that implies the trauma is there, and may push them to elaborate on it. For instance, if someone was in a bad train crash and one of the dead people on the rails was a birthday clown, causing their PTSD to tie "clown" to an adrenaline surge that creates a panic attack and feeling ill for days if there's no survival-level danger to run from, then they might feel they have to mention the crash (and feel awful) so that the GM doesn't think they're just afraid of IT, or that something awful was done to them as a child by a birthday clown.

Even in PM/by note, that's handing a random your deepest darkest vulnerabilities; the temptation for those worst affected/most in need of hard lines there is to just...not. All that lines and veils stuff is honestly worse than the gamble of going in blind - effectively "one of these many baskets may have snakes in it" versus "I gave the GM a basket with a snake in it". Then there's stuff like horror gaming, where the GM is expected to work with phobias, and without detail might place that snake basket too close without realising how dangerous it is.

My solution for respecting people with psychic allergies is clear Content Guidelines - not only do they make enforcement a lot easier, but if someone has trauma that's likely to get hit they can see when and how that might happen, then make an informed decision as to whether to engage with the game or hand me specific detail to avoid when it looks likely to come up and/or they know me better. No set times, no pulling aside, no one person gambles whilst the others skip in. The worst thing you can do for someone who's had their brain chemistry smashed out of whack for whatever reason is to make them feel self conscious and/or singled out for being hurt.
Morty
member, 330 posts
The Doctor.
Mon 16 Sep 2019
at 18:08
  • msg #5

Re: Consent in Gaming

IMNSHO, the question of consent is blown way out of proportion. Also, has been done quite a few times before in decades past. And in a much more eloquent way, too. Dead horse, meet stick.

Anyone who really needs this PDF is suffering from a serious communication deficit.

If you distrust the GM or other players, don't play with them. Speak up when bothered. State your desires - the others around the table aren't telepaths. Apologize if you're being a fruit/fruitette. The stuff you were supposed to learn in kindergarten.

And the RPG consent checklist is... hmm. I don't even know. It looks like something the "Dare you enter my magical realm"1 GM thought up. I think if I brought this to any of my RL games people would accuse me of trying to introduce odd sexual fetishes. (Then again, genocidal terrorist thirst demons with cancer, hmm.) Or perhaps it's intended the other way round, as a primer for sandboxes - but what if all my players want to explore homosexual claustrophobic pregnancy with eyeballs?

On second glance, the whole piece seems more at home in the FAQ section on some BDSM site. Aftercare, fetish keywords, safewords, scene framing...

The art is great. 10/10.

I don't know. Perhaps I'm just getting old and insensitive to how fragile the young'uns have become.2



1 https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Magical_realm
2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukisoucFIk4 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unkIVvjZc9Y
swordchucks
member, 1567 posts
Mon 16 Sep 2019
at 18:34
  • msg #6

Re: Consent in Gaming

Morty:
RPG consent checklist

The problem with that and most stuff of this nature is simple.  The people that actually need them would never use them while the people that would use them are probably already doing all the right things to not need them.

It's very important for GMs and players to understand that not everyone brings the same experiences to the table and that some things are going to provoke reactions from people  that you can't necessarily predict.  Try to be aware of the common issues, try to give fair warning when you expect something might be problematic, solicit feedback from others periodically, and be willing to accept feedback that's negative.  If you do that, you're already not part of the problem.
RosstoFalstaff
member, 173 posts
Mon 16 Sep 2019
at 18:40
  • msg #7

Re: Consent in Gaming

I'm seeing a lot of response on social media to this pdf and as someone who immediately downloaded it yesterday I just thought "hey why not weigh in?"

I'm finding a lot of people are questioning the necessity of the product (including one guy suggesting that a real roleplayer would use the game to roleplay out their trauma and heal from it) and I'm wondering if these people have had people in their group who have triggers before? The pdf is fairly fluffy and pointless I'll admit (but see the price tag) however some people do actually need this spelled out for them. The DM is absolutely someone who can say "if you've got a problem with my story you can leave" but the players aren't unreasonable for leaving and they're not the apple in this situation.

I happened to have my RL D&D game yesterday and in the preamble before getting back into the game I talked with my players about it and pointed out that a lot of the earlier things on the checklist of triggers are core parts of D&D's aesthetic (spiders, worms, demons, blood, rats) and that you SHOULD be having a conversation with a player because if you just play the game as normal a beholder, gibbering mouther (an encounter which did actually make a lot of players uncomfortable) or the beetle swarm at the beginning of the Forgotten Forge may well surprise you with a negative reaction from the players.

In the case of the gibbering mouther that ended up with asking the players if they would be okay continuing. Five seconds of effort to not be a complete apple.

This is especially important for me because there are lines which I'd rather not cross when I'm gaming (though in my case it's going to be because I don't want to start arguing real world politics with gamers about 'historical accuracy' in fantasy games). Let's just say there's a reason I prefer Eberron to Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk.
engine
member, 724 posts
There's a brain alright
but it's made out of meat
Mon 16 Sep 2019
at 19:59
  • msg #8

Re: Consent in Gaming

The idea itself of obtaining consent seems to cause such a strong negative reaction in some people that I begin to wonder if "obtaining consent" should be the first consent anyone should try to obtain.

I have no problem with guidelines or checklists or the like. I don't feel like I'm usually in a situation where I need to do more than post a basic description or list of preferences, and be open for questions, but I can well imagine some situations where more guidelines would be desirable.
evileeyore
member, 217 posts
GURPS GM and Player
Mon 16 Sep 2019
at 22:59
  • msg #9

Re: Consent in Gaming

Morty:
Anyone who really needs this PDF is suffering from a serious communication deficit.

Yup, basically.

quote:
I don't know. Perhaps I'm just getting old and insensitive to how fragile the young'uns have become.

Less "youngins these days" and more "a small group of people that have been taught to embrace their fragility, seek out more ways in which they can be fragile, and try to force everyone else to cater to their fragility".

Plenty of young people these days are turning against "progressivism" as they see it as a force designed to hold back and cripple rather than expand and uplift.




RosstoFalstaff:
(including one guy suggesting that a real roleplayer would use the game to roleplay out their trauma and heal from it)

/sharplyindrawnbreath.ASMR

I can see using rp as a way to work through or around trauma, but not outside of a controlled environment with a trained sane professional.
Rystefn
member, 46 posts
Tue 17 Sep 2019
at 06:34
  • msg #10

Re: Consent in Gaming

Morty:
And the RPG consent checklist is... hmm. I don't even know. It looks like something the "Dare you enter my magical realm"1 GM thought up. I think if I brought this to any of my RL games people would accuse me of trying to introduce odd sexual fetishes.


It is literally exactly this. It was written by a BDSM porn writer. There's a reason a lot of this stuff keeps getting tied back to "safe words" and why the title is "Consent in Gaming." It's 100% about magical realms. They are literally attempting to push their BDSM kink space into the gaming space.

Meanwhile, they do this by constantly wanting to refer to this stuff as "Safety tools." Explicitly saying that gaming in intrinsically unsafe. Which is a stupid idea on the face of it, even before you bring up that we already had this fight a few decades ago where we were trying to prove to people that it IS safe. I remember the Satanic Panic. It sounds goofy looking back if you don't know how bad it got, but I saw the book burnings. People getting hauled off and grilled by the cops about their Satanic D&D rituals. The people who thought that our hobby was literally evil didn't go away. We shouldn't be giving them ammo.
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