What are the DM's obligations of disclosure for sensitive game material? What is "sensitive" game material?

[ccs]

Quote Originally Posted by ExploderWizard View Post

I just try to avoid gaming with snowflakes. Anyone that can be "triggered" by made up fantasy game content, isn't stable enough to be playing.

This is a frankly a pretty cowardly and bad faith response to a thoughtful thread.

You saying that doesn't make it not true, nor an invalid approach to avoiding problems.
Some solutions just don't require a great deal of discussion.

 

[Sunseeker]

This is a frankly a pretty cowardly and bad faith response to a thoughtful thread.

Precisely. I mean shoot I had a traumatic experience when I was a kid in a martial arts class. Couple weeks back I got triggered (oh how I hate that word) by reading a news article about a guy doing martial arts locally. On the flip side, the monk is my favorite class and I love martial arts movies, neither of which bother me in the slightest.

The problem with "triggers" is that they are not universal, and often they are not consistent. Which is why it is of utmost importance that a player who does get triggered say something about it, but also for DMs and other players to keep an eye out for a player who may appear uncomfortable. Speaking up can be hard, and fudge I was embarrassed just to talk to my wife about getting triggered over that article, like heck I would have mentioned it to any of my D&D friends (and surprise, I didn't!).

My experience with people who call others who get triggered snowflakes and refuse to understand what's going on...are generally jerkwads who make an overt effort to be as offensive as possible.

 

[Sunseeker]

This is a reasonable approach. This is how I handle things as well. But if we have to censor rough living (my ranger skinned a buck) or the fact that people fighting with swords get stabbed...game over (literally and figuratively).

Right, I mean extreme violence, rape, BDSM, IRL political agendas and piss wizards are not reasonable expectations going into a general D&D game.

 

[tardigrade]

This is a frankly a pretty cowardly and bad faith response to a thoughtful thread.

Darn, someone beat me to it.

I remember some years back reading a few of those "worst DMs ever" threads, and IIRC most of the ones that weren't about body odour were about ones who were obsessed with R-rated "realism", often including abusing one particular player's character.

Put it another way: there's a reason FATAL is pretty universally loathed as the worst RPG ever.

I am not personally 'triggered' by anything that I'm aware of, but I wouldn't play with people who take this attitude because frankly I have better things to do with my time.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

We play at a game cafe, so we need to exercise some decorum in behavior. Swearing is kept to a minimum. Violence against children was mentioned by a player as something that should not occur, so it does not. Sexual content has been relegated to innuendo and tame double entendres. I guess you could say we keep it PG-13 yet we still have a blast. If we played in a non-public place, we’d probably stick to the same style and still enjoy ourselves all the same.

On a side note, I appreciate threads like this as they provide an opportunity to learn how many other tables handle being good stewards of the game. Unfortunately, it also exposes those who would step on the play styles of others in an effort to make themselves feel “tough” or “superior”. Good luck to them - I would have no interest in playing at their table if they prefer good ol’ boy locker room banter to basic decency. I suspect the vast majority of the community feels the same. Thankfully, there is an Ignore button so I can silence the troll noise and more quickly absorb advice from the vast majority who are worth listening to.

 

[Bawylie]

You might tackle the tone, content, and maturity level of the game in a session zero. That would be the best time to decide collectively if you wanted to play a nice PG Narnia style game, a grim and gritty Game of Thrones, or something in between.

Maybe we need a visual - a sliding scale of various Batman movies and tv shows. Adam West on the far left, Batman the Animated Series as a midpoint, and the Dark Knight Returns on the far right. Couple of points between. George Clooney not a valid option.

 

[pogre]

It very much depends on the players. I tread pretty lightly with folks I don't know all that well. With some of my veterans it gets pretty course. I currently run a game for my three teen-aged sons and their friends - it's fairly tame and I don't tolerate cursing or boorish behavior.

I have offended players in the past with game set-ups or circumstances and it's a very bad feeling. They were similar to the rabies scenario - not things you would normally suspect to be "triggers", but nonetheless, I felt genuinely bad that I had impinged on the person's fun or even made them anxious or sad.

In my experience, the real dangers of these kind of social situations tend to come from players more often than DMs.

 

[Staccat0]

We play at a game cafe, so we need to exercise some decorum in behavior. Swearing is kept to a minimum. Violence against children was mentioned by a player as something that should not occur, so it does not. Sexual content has been relegated to innuendo and tame double entendres. I guess you could say we keep it PG-13 yet we still have a blast. If we played in a non-public place, we’d probably stick to the same style and still enjoy ourselves all the same.

On a side note, I appreciate threads like this as they provide an opportunity to learn how many other tables handle being good stewards of the game. Unfortunately, it also exposes those who would step on the play styles of others in an effort to make themselves feel “tough” or “superior”. Good luck to them - I would have no interest in playing at their table if they prefer good ol’ boy locker room banter to basic decency. I suspect the vast majority of the community feels the same. Thankfully, there is an Ignore button so I can silence the troll noise and more quickly absorb advice from the vast majority who are worth listening to.

Yeah. I think it's entirely valid to be like "Oh I don't worry about that stuff because it's pretty clear that nobody in my group has any issues" or "Yeah, I don't really bother with disclaimers, but my games don't feature anything crazy like sexual assaul. They are in line with basic expectations for the genre." But when people sneer at the basic concept of like... empathy? I can't imagine what drew them to storytelling or roleplaying in the first place. *shrug*

 

[MNblockhead]

This is a frankly a pretty cowardly and bad faith response to a thoughtful thread.

Don't feed the Trolls.

Obviously not a comment made with any intention of engaging in a meaningful conversation.

 

[Li Shenron]

Currently I am running a family game with children as young as 7, so we definitely avoid a lot of stuff.

In general, even when playing among adults I am not interested in bringing up sexual situations, but if some player looks for them in the story, I allow them but I enforce skipping over the narrative details. I do the same about out-of-combat violence. So if a player wants his PC to sleep with an NPC (or another PC) we let it happen but we fast-forward past the entire thing. Same if an evil-bent PC decides to torture a monster/NPC, we skip the whole narrative and jump directly to the results i.e. did it serve the purpose or not.

Rape and violence against children are much more sensitive topics tho. In my games you'll never hear even the worst villain doing those things explicitly. As a player, you are free to imagine the villains doing them in the background, as part of their "being a villain" package, but it is unnecessary to mention them for the sake of the game. I would mention some occurrence of those only if I was absolutely utterly sure that no one at the table has ever had a history of them in their family, but then you'd be surprised at how many actually have... so for me it's better to be safe than sorry.