Consent in Gaming - Free Guidebook

[S'mon]

@seankreynolds Your discussion however reasonable it may be neither matches the text you are quoting, nor does it match the interpretation that those defending the text in the thread have made.

That's brusquer than I'd put it, but yes I think the text would have benefitted from more discussion of the decision to change a game, or have a player not play, being a group decision to be reached through mutually respectful discussion. Because some people here and elsewhere have the impression you (SKR & SG) were saying that the decision to participate is something the individual has a moral right to impose on the group. Some then vehemently disagree with that position, others support it.

(anti-strawman edit: Hopefully I didn't need to say this, but of course no group ever has the right to force a player to participate, and that's not what I meant.)

 

[S'mon]

I would strongly advise anyone offering advice on this topic actually to read some basic counseling principles.

I'm not against* being aware of counselling principles. But most GMs are not counsellors, most RPG sessions are not counselling sessions, and indeed I don't think people with problems (which includes me & many of us here I'm sure) should approach the typical RPG table or most social situations as analogous to a counselling session in any way.

Of course there are exceptions; some therapists use role-play in counselling, some RPG sessions do involve deep emotional stuff well beyond typical social interaction.

*I am in fact in favour of being aware of counselling principles. I need to use some basic counselling principles in my job when I do academic Personal Tutoring. But as a GM at an RPG table I am not acting in a counsellor role. I play D&D to get away from that sort of responsibility!

 

[billd91]

OK then, so I have a claustrophobia/drowning phobia, as I mentioned upthread, connected to the deaths of my cousins in the Herald of Free Enterprise sinking. If my friends want to run a game that includes that sort of material, then I may not be able to play. It would be wrong of me to try to stop my friends from playing, or to resent them playing something without me.

Edit: But if I tell them my phobia and they freely & happily decide to play something else so that I can play too, that's great. The important thing is that they not feel pressured to do so.

I might also expect that the actual sinking might be downplayed in favor of the aftermath (being a castaway and so on). Paizo does this with a couple of adventure paths. Even the movie Das Boot shunts a traumatic depth charging, very traumatic from the point of view of correspondent Lt. Werner who dives into his berth and probably passes out in terror, to black.

 

[Gradine]

Some people have been defending the document by saying that the person gets to tell the group what to do, and that they would be monstrous not to accommodate the individual. So apparently the confusion here doesn't just extend to the detractors.

This is the problem I'm having. Nobody is saying this. The document isn't saying this. It is literally all about respecting people's boundaries. You don't get to argue with someone about their boundaries. That's what the text says. Maybe there's room for more nuance in the text about what to do if the group decides whatever element of their game that's causing the problem is more important than respecting those boundaries. I happen to think that's a pretty crappy thing to do, but then my own biases come from a place of "game with your close friends or don't game at all" so maybe I'm the weird one. But literally nobody has said "and you MUST abide by their wishes or be cast into the fiery pits of badness and despair."

I mean, I'll probably think less of you, but why would anybody give a crap about that?

 

[Bedrockgames]

This is the problem I'm having. Nobody is saying this.

There are absolutely people saying this. Like a lot of us have said, this particular aspect of the discussion isn't something that is as much an issue with the PDF, as with people in the community involved in the discussion. I've seen calls for the Checklist to be part of every game, I've seen people say anyone who doesn't agree with the checklist should be shoved out of the hobby, and I have absolutely seen people say if someone checks off something on the checklist you must abide by it or your a monster (rather than allow for some groups to say "you might want to find a group suitable to your taste").

 

[Wolfpack48]

I’m laughing because I just realized this whole thing is an intersection of our beloved game worlds with the real one, and...it feels good. So often we’ve had this escapism...rap, for lack of a better word, that we gamers can’t deal with real life. And it feels good to be talking about this.

The one thing not mentioned in the doc, which might be for a later release is whether roleplaying could actually help people overcome or come to terms with phobias. To learn to deal with and tolerate the tough things in real life. Why not, as long as folks are consenting?

I know all those who hate this psychology stuff are screaming right now!

 

[Bedrockgames]

I mean, if they understood it like I did they probably would agree with me, but that's beside the point.

I think this is part of why the debate and discussion are so hard to have. Sometimes we have the same facts, see the same arguments and reach very different conclusions. I don't think, even if you took me step by step through every process of your understanding, you and I would reach the same conclusion about this checklist. We both probably have very different foundational ideas and experiences, and our personalities are different. Those would probably lead us to different conclusions.

 

[Wolfpack48]

There are absolutely people saying this. Like a lot of us have said, this particular aspect of the discussion isn't something that is as much an issue with the PDF, as with people in the community involved in the discussion. I've seen calls for the Checklist to be part of every game, I've seen people say anyone who doesn't agree with the checklist should be shoved out of the hobby, and I have absolutely seen people say if someone checks off something on the checklist you must abide by it or your a monster (rather than allow for some groups to say "you might want to find a group suitable to your taste").

I’m not saying it. There’s 1 at least!

 

[Bedrockgames]

I’m laughing because I just realized this whole thing is an intersection of our beloved game worlds with the real one, and...it feels good. So often we’ve had this escapism...rap, for lack of a better word, that we gamers can’t deal with real life. And it feels good to be talking about this.

The one thing not mentioned in the doc, which might be for a later release is whether roleplaying could actually help people overcome or come to terms phobias. To learn to deal with and tolerate the tough things in real life. Why not, as long as folks are consenting?

I know all those who hate this psychology stuff are screaming right now!

One of my problems with how I am seeing this discussion framed in places is it seems a blurring of the real world and the imaginary. Confusing real world harm with imaginary harm.

 

[Celebrim]

True, most players won't make these demands, and bow out. Friends or even reasonably polite players will then say, "No, don't do that. We'd rather have you at the table and scrap our nautical theme. There's a ton of other cool ideas out there that we can all enjoy." Then said player will try and tell group not to change their plans just for them, and table will say, it's fine, we don't mind, etc.

I'm hoping this is a more common example then person swooping in, making demands...

The guide is just a way to sort stuff out ahead of time, isn't it? And it's probably not going to be super common that there be no rats or deserts. It's not going to bring games crashing down cause there's too many things on the no-go list.

Well, no, it isn't. I wish it was. If it had have been, I would have liked it better. But the guide borrowed a lot of ideas from discussions about consent in a sexual relationship, which might be perfectly fine discussions of consent in a sexual relationship, but which are problematic in the context of a most social role-play.

For example, in a sexual relationship, we would like it if consent could be withdrawn at any point and for any reason, and when it was we'd like that to be prioritized over pretty much anything else in order to avoid rape. In a sexual act, it makes perfect sense for everyone to have a full veto over continuing the process.

But the problem is that this doesn't always provide a good model for mutuality in a social role-playing group. Consent in a group is usually about consensus, and has some give and take, and usually involves discussions - all the thing that you imagine in your head when you imagine how this ought to play out. But that doesn't seem to be the actual statement of the text, which as I said was borrowed from ideas about sexual consent.

While run time objections to content that comes up are of course reasonable (and I'd argue normal and maybe preferable in most cases to airing everything out ahead of time), it's not necessarily reasonable to expect that if something comes up during play that we just stop everything right away with no discussion, no explanation, and no negotiation about how to proceed in order to get the game going. Maybe some objections actually are like that, but most of them just don't involve activities that are nearly as unsafe or traumatic or potentially dangerous as all of that, and when people start hearing people talking about social RPGs as if they are usually that unsafe, traumatic and potentially dangerous they really start wondering what people are trying to communicate and if that really is how we want to publicly represent our hobby.

And people shouldn't necessarily expect that they can hold a full veto over the game, beyond simply walking away from the game,. But, in this thread, you can find people arguing that if someone was made to walk away from the game, because the group couldn't accommodate them, that that was a monstrous act. Maybe in some imaginary cases it was, but not for the majority that actually come up.

And other people suggested that while a full veto over some things might be reasonable, suggesting that a full veto could be used about anything - which while reasonable for two people in a sexual act - not only wasn't reasonable for social gaming, but would be likely to encourage dysfunctional play in practice and increase acrimony rather than harmony and consensus.

So in short, no, most certainly the guide is not about just sorting things out ahead of time.