Consent in Gaming - Free Guidebook

[seankreynolds]

I read the PDF. And the people who wrote it, as much as I respect them and their design work, are not psychiatrists either (as far as I know). But I will say this. I base my opinion on personal experience in my family with issues like mental illness. I am not speaking from a place of ignorance on this. I think there are lots of good reasons to question whether this list is healthy for us.

FYI, Shanna has a degree in psychology, and part of her training involved grief and trauma support.

 

[Bedrockgames]

FYI, Shanna has a degree in psychology, and part of her training involved grief and trauma support.

Thanks for that. That is information I didn't know about her.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And have you ever considered that given your dislike of, and invocation of, the Satanic Panic, you might be playing more of a Patricia Pulling role than Gary Gygax?

I always ask myself if I am being the bad actor or the bad guy in a situation. And sometimes I am and have to cop to it. In this situation though, I don't think I am doing anything wrong. I criticizing a PDF, and the ideas that the PDF espouses. I don't object to people thinking I am wrong about those ideas (if someone things this checklist is helpful and thinks I am misguided, I am fine with that). What I object to is some of the stuff I've experienced in online discussions surrounding this (being called a sociopath because I'd rather not use such a checklist, for example, or being told people like me need to be driven from the hobby or boycotted out).

 

[S'mon]

True. But that's a very different beast altogether from Judith asking you not to include car crashes in your sessions because she was the only survivor of a crash with her friends as a teenager and she still feels immense trauma and survivor's guilt over it. Because The Consent Handbook is very much about that kind of scenario and not at all about the one you just described.

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.

 

[S'mon]

the ideas that the PDF espouses.

A lot of what's in the PDF is pretty reasonable, and even what's not so reasonable is much less unreasonable than some of the stuff being posted in the later part of this thread.

 

[Wolfpack48]

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.

Again it’s just a conversation. Your Referee may be willing to change something or you may be willing to opt out. All it’s saying is have a talk about it and decide.

 

[Bedrockgames]

A lot of what's in the PDF is pretty reasonable, and even what's not so reasonable is much less unreasonable than some of the stuff being posted in the later part of this thread.

Like I said before, I don't take issue with the writers writing it, or with the writers themselves. I just disagree with the checklist and with a lot of the content in the PDF (but, I don't think the writers did anything wrong in writing it). I have basically a few points of criticism of the document itself: the default of no, the treating it as a consent issue rather than a issue of appropriate content, a lot of the items on the checklist, and the no debate thing). There may be other minor points, but those were the ones that leapt out at me when I read it. That said. I think all the writers did was make a tool. Most of my disagreement has been more with people advocating that this tool be used by everyone, or saying anyone who disagrees with the tool is a monster.

 

[Gradine]

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.

Sure. Of course, I think it would be equally wrong of them to purposefully exclude you, knowing your past trauma (because this has been covered before using some kind of tool to allow you to communicate your inability to play in those types of scenarios. Right?) Especially if they tell you to either suck it up or leave. But if the DM's got an idea, and knows you're going to miss an upcoming season, then that becomes the perfect time for them to roll with it.

 

[S'mon]

Like I said before, I don't take issue with the writers writing it, or with the writers themselves. I just disagree with the checklist and with a lot of the content in the PDF (but, I don't think the writers did anything wrong in writing it). I have basically a few points of criticism of the document itself: the default of no, the treating it as a consent issue rather than a issue of appropriate content, a lot of the items on the checklist, and the no debate thing). There may be other minor points, but those were the ones that leapt out at me when I read it. That said. I think all the writers did was make a tool. Most of my disagreement has been more with people advocating that this tool be used by everyone, or saying anyone who disagrees with the tool is a monster.

Yes, I think we're pretty much in agreement.

 

[S'mon]

Sure. Of course, I think it would be equally wrong of them to purposefully exclude you, knowing your past trauma (because this has been covered before using some kind of tool to allow you to communicate your inability to play in those types of scenarios. Right?) Especially if they tell you to either suck it up or leave. But if the DM's got an idea, and knows you're going to miss an upcoming season, then that becomes the perfect time for them to roll with it.

Yes, I think we're in agreement(!)