Consent in Gaming - Free Guidebook

[billd91]

This is really the challenge with Con games. No matter how well-run or safe one table is, you are surrounded by many other tables with different game systems and table rules. It is difficult enough to deal with exceptionally loud groups, much less policing content at other tables that are polluting your table's safe space.

Well, sure. Con games aren't for everyone and you figure that the most broadly fragile in the community are probably already self-selecting away from those gaming environments as a result. If you have a trigger, you have to accept that other people may, entirely innocently, trip them without knowing you have them.

But that doesn't mean that, around the table in question that the person with the trigger chooses to play, you can't take steps to minimize the risk through sharing information on issues that squick you out.

 

[Nagol]

Do you honestly think I'm joking giving my background? Guess what, occult references actually don't appear in any games I play, and it would be a deal breaker. It's not a hypothetical.

And do you really think I'd don't have the same opinion of the arguments being made by the other side?

According to your side, this shouldn't be up for debate. You shouldn't be allowed to say that the request is unreasonable. I know people who play D&D put don't feel comfortable with pagan gods in the campaign. Now you are mocking them. I don't actually play any games with occult references. Now you are mocking me. So much for your inclusivity. You can't even abide by your own rules. When there requests don't fit into your framework of what is reasonable, now all the sudden this is something that we have time to debate.

Let's be real. This is the morality you have on display: "You, hater, should just play single-person video games at home alone. You, hater, should disappear. Because, and let's be 100% clear, YOU ARE NOT A GOOD OR REASONABLE PERSON, AND NO ONE BENEFITS FROM GAMING WITH YOU." This is your inclusivity. In your language inclusivity means people you don't like should "disappear".

When I GM, you need my consent to sit at the table when I run a game and I need your consent to run you as a player. Now, you can get my consent only through a brief interview process already. I've certainly withheld it in the past and will continue to provide revocable consent to players I wish at the table. Sitting at the table can be revoked at my discretion for pretty much any reason. Consent has been revoked for physical violence, verbal assault, inattention, distracting behaviour, and in-game actions outside the social construct to name a few. I try to get player consent through a brief overview of the game expectations. I have certainly lost consent to run some players over the decades when our expectations did not align and I have revoked consent to some players or even the whole table when I decided I had enough. As a player, I have certainly revoked consent and walked out of many a game for a range of reasons.

This tool presented is just another option for deriving joint consent that focuses on some aspects that matter more to some people than other aspects. Much like most tools, it is specialised and fits purpose better in specific circumstances. It's cool if you don't like it.

 

[ccs]

Makes more sense to tell the players "This is like GoT".

So the first 3/4 is going to be really good, the next 24% middling - ok, & the finale pure ***?

 

[dragoner]

I have changed games on player requests, one, I had a desert adventure set up, Duneraiders by WH Keith of FASA fame, and one player having just got back from Iraq/Afghanistan, requested to not have it be in the desert, so I flipped it around and made it arctic, eg Iceraiders, it wasn't that difficult.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Some of my best friends ....

So I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express!

You are twisting my words. That isn't what I said at all. I said I have experience with it in my family in a discussion where mental illness came up. That is a far cry from 'some of my best friends are black' in a discussion about racism. And I have personal experience with PTSD. You don't know anything about me. Do not assume you know who I am or what I have experienced. But at the end of the day, people still have a right to weigh in, judge and discuss these things whether they have experience with them or not. We need people to be able to give different points of view. And I feel like there isn't much room for that in these conversations. People are making these issues out to be much more simple, and black and white than they really are. And I don't think that checklist or the PDF is a healthy way to approach this stuff.

 

[Gradine]

Do you honestly think I'm joking giving my background? Guess what, occult references actually don't appear in any games I play, and it would be a deal breaker. It's not a hypothetical.

And do you really think I'd don't have the same opinion of the arguments being made by the other side?

According to your side, this shouldn't be up for debate. You shouldn't be allowed to say that the request is unreasonable. I know people who play D&D put don't feel comfortable with pagan gods in the campaign. Now you are mocking them. I don't actually play any games with occult references. Now you are mocking me. So much for your inclusivity. You can't even abide by your own rules. When there requests don't fit into your framework of what is reasonable, now all the sudden this is something that we have time to debate.

Oh boy, there's so much wrong here, it's hard to know where to start.

First off, of course there are plenty of people who play roleplaying games that prefer to avoid "pagan" religions or occult references, and of course they are free and welcome to play whatever games they want that suit them. Including you.

Of course, that's not why you posted it in the first place. You pretty explicitly posted it as a slippery slope argument, a warning that you or someone like you would use this tool to crap over everyone else's fun. Which remains utter horse dung. That's not going to suddenly stay happening. And the reason why is the one thing you seem utterly unwilling to understand.

See, your preference to avoid those elements are just that, a preference, based on your personal belief. Those are completely reasonable. But what they are pretty obviously NOT (to everyone here but apparently you) are triggers based on personal trauma. Personal preferences can be discussed rationally. Triggered trauma can not. That's why it's not up for debate. Because that debate only worsens the person's trauma.

And see, the difference between someone having a personal quibble with an element of the game based on their own preferences and someone who is reliving trauma and the table is VERY VERY OBVIOUS to anybody with even an ounce of empathy. THAT is what this damn document is taking about. Your personal beliefs and preferences are not relevant to this conversation.

I'm not even going to touch that last paragraph; not only is every word of it false, but it's the kind of hyperbolic garbage a younger version of me would have thrown out and been immediately ashamed of.

 

[MGibster]

This tool presented is just another option for deriving joint consent that focuses on some aspects that matter more to some people than other aspects. Much like most tools, it is specialised and fits purpose better in specific circumstances. It's cool if you don't like it.

The tool part is only the last page. The pamphlet argues that one must get consent from all players before s story element can come up in a game. It treats a role playing session as if it’s an inherently dangerous activity which is absurd.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The tool part is only the last page. The pamphlet argues that one must get consent from all players before s story element can come up in a game. It treats a role playing session as if it’s an inherently dangerous activity which is absurd.

That is one of the core problems with the PDF for me. It elevates roleplaying games to a level of power that people used to give it in the satanic panic. This is dangerous stuff, seems to be the mentality. I don't think most people walk into a game thinking that way. And I don't think the people who made the PDF understand how far outside the norm this kind of thinking is (except in certain places like areas of twitter and some gaming spaces online). But I am talking to lots of regular gamers about this PDF and almost universally the reaction is bafflement.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Gradine]

Trauma-Informed Approach and Trauma-Specific Interventions - MentalHealth.org

Here. If you do nothing else today, read this with an open mind and maybe learn a thing or two about your fellow human beings.