It just ridiculous to have a check list of things you would consent to in an RPG (especially when the list includes things like thirst and severe weather).
Why? People have discussed horror stories of people who had a bad time at a convention game because it included rape and a number of trigger issues. Hussar provides an example of severe weather having effected his context. I would never include suicide when I know that one of my players lost someone close to them to suicide. One of my friends that I played D&D with in the States still gets triggered from malaria, because he got it as a kid while in Tanzania. This same person also coincidentally compulsively carries around a water bottle because they are afraid of severe thirst, a compulsion that manifested as a result of their experiences with malaria. They still enjoy D&D even though I would likely avoid these triggers if I was the GM because you know, I'm not a complete dick about other people.
Maybe some people will find it a useful conversation starter. I don’t think it is something that would be good if it became the norm in the hobby. I do think if people find use in it, that is fine.
Then why do you devote so many words and energy debating its mere existence? It's a free resource. It's a supplement. It provides an additional tool at the disposal for the GM to handle such conversations. It's optional. It's produced by an indie publisher and not mandated from on high. Again, I think that the pushback you are making on this product seems grossly disproportionate to what the associated documents actually say and do.
But I do have concerns about where this is going. And I do think it is perfectly okay to express those concern (people don’t have to agree with me and are free to make their own choices about it).
Most of those concerns, however, seem ungrounded and unreasonable though, or at least with some bad faith, especially when you compare the checklist items to sketch comedy or a parody. So what is more unreasonable? A free supplement with this checklist available for those who would want it or the people who are up in arms about the checklist existing and proclaiming that it somehow will coerce groups into being unable to play how they want? I know where I would cast my vote.
I am not saying a persons personal issues are ridiculous, I am saying filling out a consent form with all these different items on it for an RPG is ridiculous. If someone has a serious enough problem with severe weather, that mentioning it in the game could set them off, I would want them to bring it up with me, or try to sort the problem out before they join the group. If you are in a bad mental state, you can't control what comes your way in the world. If severe weather sets you off, you might see it in movies, you might read it in books, you might see art of severe weather or catch a news cast of severe weather. I don't know why we are treating an RPG table as any different from other places in the real world.
The fact that you are focusing on "severe weather" or "thirst" seems a bit silly to me, as if the usefulness of the checklist is somehow disproven by the existence of "severe weather" on the list. And it seems that arguing too much about this line of thinking is a bit of a red herring.
IME, not everyone will be comfortable speaking about these things in the manner that you want or would prefer. They may not want to talk to you directly about it because it may feel likey they are having to justify and relive their trauma for you. Some people, however, will be comforted by the existence of the consent form. This is even discussed in the Consent in Gaming document if you read it. As you say earlier, it gets the conversation started or even bypasses the need for the conversation. The checklist is
A tool among many that the GM can use to talk about consent, the game contents, and player triggers. Stop treating this checklist as "the end of liberty," as per an earlier poster, and take it for what it is: an optional tool at your disposal. The Badwrongfun Police are not going to come knocking down your door if your group chooses not to use it.
You wouldn't demand a consent form for a film, a comedy show or a play.
The thing is though that reviews and summaries exist for the media that you listed. There are places you can go online to check whether your triggers are present in these media because they are generally closed systems. Given that a TTRPG is more open-ended and has a different form of operation from these other forms of entertainment, it's fairly clear that this is a false equivalent comparison.
Again, there are reasonable requests and there are less reasonable requests. It is obviously going to be situational and depend on the context.
But that is part of the issue. You aren't the person best equipped to tell someone that their trigger is somehow less reasonable than others. And to be clear: I'm not either.
Something like severe weather, is going to be on the table. If that sets someone off, I'd explain it is going to come up and they probably shouldn't play in the game if they find it upsetting. I use weather tables and overland travel matters a lot in my campaigns. I can't see running a game with severe weather not being part of it at times. I understand a person might have a good reason for being upset about that kind of weather. I won't make fun of them. I will just honestly tell them the game is likely to have it.
Please notice that the Consent Form actually has multiple comfort levels that the player can select, including in yellow: "Okay if veiled or offstage; might be okay onstage but requires discussion ahead of time; uncertain." Oh, the horror.
But this level of acquiescence to every single potential concern just strikes me as madness. We shouldn't be allowing that to control the content of every gaming group. The person is perfectly free to find another group. There is nothing wrong with people wanting something in their game and keeping it in their game.
The real madness is when certain individuals get into a self-induced uproar about the existence of an optional (free) consent form for an RPG supplement, which they likely would not use anyway, having what is likely a rare corner case trigger and rant-up-a-storm about how it represents the potential coercion of the individual against the gaming group. Now THAT is madness. Do you know of any such individuals?
This is exactly the kind of problem I was pointing to with a list like this. I am not troubled by it if groups are voluntarily using it. But if the PDF and the list is used to force game groups to abide by every player's concerns, then it starts impacting what people can actually do. You have to give people the room to say "this game might not be for you". That isn't the end of the world. You can still be friends with that person.
This is just unsubstantiated fearmongering based on slippery slope argumentation. Can you reasonably explain how the existence of the list could do such a thing? And how is this different from a player having these concerns without the existence of the checklist?
This is the point where the checklist becomes unreasonable. Because you are saying people must do what one player says.
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And we are saying the checklist isn’t equipped to handle those kinds of nuances. When you say items on the list must be removed from play if they are checked off, then you are straight jacketing groups and trying to control what they do for their own entertainment.
Dear Captain Hyperbole, the Consent Form is a means for the person to say that they have potential problems with the topics selected at various levels of (dis)comfort. That's all. When people select that they have a hardline problem with, for example, severe weather, then what you choose to do with that information is up to you. But if I used this consent form and saw that "severe weather" was a hardline problem for a potential player, then regardless of what I thought about it as a problem, I would probably at least attempt to exercise some self-awareness, sensitivity to others, and caution with my games before claiming that the player was trying to coerce the group.
I think that one of your problems is that you are casting this debate as "the group vs. the individual" in a manner that suggests that the individual is not part of the group. Your framing seems to want to preclude them at the outset. That they are a newcomer or an outsider that has come to ruin the fun of the good ole boys and their gaming group. That framing seems disingenuous, tribalist, and also essentially casting guilt at the newcomer at the outset.
What is next are you going to tell people they must not see a movie if one of their friends has a problem with it? People can sit out a movie or game. They can find other people to play with
More slippery slope ad absurdum arguments from you?
I've only read the last few pages of the thread, but I have to wonder why someone so easily traumatized by violence would play a violent game like D&D. I have a fear of heights and I guarantee you that you won't see me scaling a cliff. It seems to me that people would avoid things that are likely to trigger their traumas.
Because violence takes many different forms, and that does not mean that everyone wants to experience at the game table every form of violence. And you do not always know what a GM will choose to include in the game or what other players will do as part of their actions in the game.
