Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6104153" data-attributes="member: 4937">Matthias is on the money there.To really make the scares real, you need someone committed to a fantasy/narrative/exploration agenda that enjoys emmersion in to the scene and into the emotional or philosophical conflicts raised there by.If you have someone with primarily a challenge/recreation/empowerment/fellowship agenda, then he's going to without meaning to ruin it, because as far as he's concerned he's there to play a game and have some laughs and "OMG why is everyone being so serious."But there are other real 'on board issues' as well any time you are trying to inflict real emotions on people.  Make sure that person IRL who is phobic of spiders is on board for your arachnaphobia scene.  Some players may be ok with children as psychopathic killers; some might find violence against children a place you should never go even in a game.  Make sure everyone is on board the whole aborted babies scene, because IRL you may have had people with miscarriages and abortions and all sorts of trauma.  Those occult themes may seem like window dressing to you, but won't to someone whose left an occult or particular an abusive occult background.  What's intellectual fun for you may be really too close to home for someone else.   You don't want to risk blurring that line between fantasy and reality too much.  It's a good idea to hand out questionaires before you even get into the details of campaign conception and ask people, "What MPAA rating are you comfortable at?", "What scenes or places do you just never want to the story to go?", and make sure you are ready to abandon ship or go elsewhere if someone says, "You know, I really can't do this."We have to take our hobby seriously, especially when we are the sort of people who say, "You know, this game it can be art, it can be powerful dramatic and engender all sorts of emotions in people, and it can deal with serious subjects in a serious thought provoking way."   Because, let's face it, role-playing isn't just a game - it's a teaching and psychotheraphy tool that we've turned into a game.  We don't want to run wild like mad surgeons with the power and responcibility we've been given doing unlicenced and potentially abusive or unintentional psychotheraphy on each other and trying to pretend its 'just fun'.</blockquote>

Verification