SteveC
Doing the best imitation of myself
I have a question that I’d love to get thoughts from Enwolders on.
Maybe this could get controversial, but that’s not my intention. If it does, please mod this sooner rather than later.
I’m writing a game, and one of the things I’m including is a section on designing a game around player limits and definite no-go areas. I know about X-Cards and Lines/Veils, but this is intended as something different than that, although I will be including references to them.
My idea is to take different campaign categories and rate them, as if it were a movie. Since I’m in the US, I’m using that system. My different categories so far are:
Political and Social Criticism
Violence and Gore
Sexuality
Language
Horror
And the ratings would be G, PG, PG-13, R, and MA.
I know that some of these categories are controversial: many will say "everything is political/not being political is a political choice," and I get that. Let's not debate that factor if we can.
I'd love suggestions for categories to discuss in broad terms that I'm just forgetting about. And I think Enworlders have some strong feelings on different campaign elements that I'd love to hear about from you.
In addition to ratings by category, I’d want players to put limits on the game, things within each category that are no-go for them. Ideas that I’ve seen for this are one player who is fine with violence, but gave a no-go to violence against children. Another wanted a no-go to body horror.
I say this because I know from personal experience that sometimes people will not enjoy a game that could have worked for them if the details had been known up front. And sometimes this can be a signal that a particular campaign is just not for you. My "no violence against kids" line comes from a friend who played in my Curse of Strahd game for about three sessions and said, "I can't do this" because his own child was having a ton of medical troubles at the time. Now that I have my own child, I see where he was coming from differently.
Do you have any thoughts about categories? Anything I’m missing?
Now I know some of you will say “don’t include this at all,” and that is definitely a school of thought that I understand, but it’s going to be there, at least some variation of it. We'll see that form of it survives contact with the playtest.
Maybe this could get controversial, but that’s not my intention. If it does, please mod this sooner rather than later.
I’m writing a game, and one of the things I’m including is a section on designing a game around player limits and definite no-go areas. I know about X-Cards and Lines/Veils, but this is intended as something different than that, although I will be including references to them.
My idea is to take different campaign categories and rate them, as if it were a movie. Since I’m in the US, I’m using that system. My different categories so far are:
Political and Social Criticism
Violence and Gore
Sexuality
Language
Horror
And the ratings would be G, PG, PG-13, R, and MA.
I know that some of these categories are controversial: many will say "everything is political/not being political is a political choice," and I get that. Let's not debate that factor if we can.
I'd love suggestions for categories to discuss in broad terms that I'm just forgetting about. And I think Enworlders have some strong feelings on different campaign elements that I'd love to hear about from you.
In addition to ratings by category, I’d want players to put limits on the game, things within each category that are no-go for them. Ideas that I’ve seen for this are one player who is fine with violence, but gave a no-go to violence against children. Another wanted a no-go to body horror.
I say this because I know from personal experience that sometimes people will not enjoy a game that could have worked for them if the details had been known up front. And sometimes this can be a signal that a particular campaign is just not for you. My "no violence against kids" line comes from a friend who played in my Curse of Strahd game for about three sessions and said, "I can't do this" because his own child was having a ton of medical troubles at the time. Now that I have my own child, I see where he was coming from differently.
Do you have any thoughts about categories? Anything I’m missing?
Now I know some of you will say “don’t include this at all,” and that is definitely a school of thought that I understand, but it’s going to be there, at least some variation of it. We'll see that form of it survives contact with the playtest.
