There has been I think broad agreement that if a person feels uncomfortable they should walk away. Certainly I have argued that I was in control of my own boundaries and I expected the same of the players.
But now we are turning the argument on its head. Because we have been told we were racists, intolerant, alt-right borderline sociopaths for not accommodating any request and not treating all requests as reasonable, and that if anyone walked away from our table because we couldn't accommodate their phobia of spiders in our Drow game, that we were morally equivalent to people who drove away people because we couldn't refrain from making sexist, racist, or otherwise hateful comments.
Nope. There is not broad agreement that a person who feels uncomfortable should walk away. If that's your choice as someone bringing a consent issue to a group, cool. You manage your boundaries your way. But others would really like to stay, and are asking for help to do that. Your position is that "no" is a perfectly acceptable answer, for reasons. I argue that it isn't, for reasons. (I suspect that each of us harbours conditional "maybes," rather than binary responses.) This doc as presented, I think, leans toward my position, as it wants very much for people to get together and play, and proposes ways to do so, but it also clearly states that leaving is an option, and also leaves room for compromise.
No one I've seen has claimed racism. Intolerance? Kinda depends on whether the default answer is "not at my table," and why, but yeah, there's been that, as recently as a dozen posts ago. Alt-right? That was banned, though some arguments have still used talking points or tools. Moral equivalencies are your own.
No one has advocated treating all requests as reasonable.
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.
Nope. I haven't seen one person "defending the doc" saying one person gets to direct a group. Certainly not me. Certainly not the doc. And "monstrous" is your word.
A conscious choice to exclude a potential player because their consent issue runs afoul of your game - regardless of stripe - is not inclusive. An unwillingness to consider alternatives is not inclusive. A mutually arrived-at decision that the game won't be a good fit is aces. Is it unreasonable for a person to ask you to drop your game in favor of one that suits them? Not necessarily, but quite possibly, maybe probably. To insist on it? I'd say definitely (other mileage may vary). But to decide for yourself, in your head, that there is more value in your game as it exists at that moment than in that person being there to play it with you, I just don't have a positive way to spin it. That isn't strictly about social gaming "fun" anymore.
But the doc isn't just about potential players, it's about existing ones. When someone in your (anyone's) group develops, learns, or reveals an intense phobia, trauma, etc. over a game element being introduced (or planned for next time) and drops an X-card, are you going to tell your long-time group member to leave? Will you expect them to bow out on their own because it would inconvenience friends? If you're willing to change your game for someone you know, but not someone you barely know or don't know, then your sticking point really isn't consent issues or practices raised in this doc. And if you really expect a long-time member to leave because the rest of the group would really like to fight spiders, it's clear which is valued more, and no guidebook can address that.
Comparing a child's phobia but willingness to pretend to an adult's trauma or PTSD shows how great the gulf in understanding and lack of empathy are.
And someone walking away from your table for your benefit is not the same as someone being told they're not welcome due to an inconvenient personal problem.
This is all being approached as a zero-sum game, nuke from orbit stuff. Their fun or my fun. It doesn't need to be. The claims that this doc gives a single player the ability to kill or direct a game, or group, just aren't supported. And no one is advocating that. The doc doesn't advocate that, or any one approach at all, but only tries to ensure that everyone at the table is willing and able to handle a player who needs this [X] thing not happen. The take that this must end games, end fun, that this is tyrannical, is just so off the mark it boggles the mind. And that some insist that the fairest and most considerate and respectful thing for their own "fun" is for the person traumatized to bow out, is just as mind-blowing.
The counter-inclusive argument (not the criticism of this doc's approaches or application) seems grounded in (and these are my words here), "I have a right to my fun the way I want to have it, and anyone who wants to change that is the problem. I'm the real victim here." There's a kernel of truth in there that we can all here probably get behind. We want our game. But that's not what's at stake, and framing it that way is one of the things impeding inclusivity. If a person's fun in the game is derived entirely or almost entirely from the in-game content, such that changes to that content are anathema, there is a different discussion worth having elsewhere, and is hardly a defense against respecting an X-card.
No single approach or tool will meet every situation or sit well with every gamer. We can have more than one. At-home groups of friends will have a different social contract than strangers at a con, and different needs. Not everyone in the X-card rainbow will have the same requests or need the same help. Still, we can make this happen. But to just expect people with content issues to "sit this one out" instead of figuring out how to broaden our own games is the opposite of inclusivity, and to defend that choice as "but it's not fair to me, I really like [X]" or "but their trauma isn't real harm" or "they can play some other game?" The problem isn't in the doc, but in the community.
