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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 7823125" data-attributes="member: 177">Humans aren't that great at risk assessment, and so we often see objections like these - where someone describes a worst-case scenario, and use that to discard an entire proposition, without a whole lot of thought to how likely that particular scenario is going to be, in practice.  It is incredibly easy to imagine a scene with some catastrophic problem*.  This reaches to our fear, which can be quite convincing, but without knowing the probability, that fear is irrational.I mean, if you are in the camp that, since the X-card has never been needed in your games before, it won't be needed now, this should be a non-argument, right?  The card has never been needed, so for it to come up in exactly this case... is pretty much impossible, right? You're only putting the card on the table as a pro forma nod to the comfort of others, though you know, in your heart of hearts, it won't be used at all, much less in the climax moment of the adventure.For folks who admit that maybe, just maybe, the card might be called for - do you run games where your climatic scenes are not at all thematically linked to the previous elements of the game?  Like, if your boss fight at the end is a huge gorram spider... you'd have been putting in loads of spidery stuff beforehand, right?  There would have been little spiders, and egg sacs, and webs all over the place, right?  And the player would have carded out earlier, not at the climax scene. Surprise carding out at the climax scene is just as likely as surprise spider as the climax scene.  You are unlikely to hit the issue only at the end.  You'll have the ability to adjust, or let the player know that if the spider-stuff is an issue, this won't be a game for them, and the thing goes on without that player.* Anyone can do it - especially among imaginative game-players.  F'rex:  You don't use an X-card.  You freak out a player with PTSD so bad, they dissociate right there at the table.  From your perspective they spend 10 or 15 minutes staring into space, not responding to you at all.  You continue with the game, with them just sitting there.  They eventually come out of it, and abrupltly leave the table.  They are so humiliated by the experience that, combined with the depression that often accompanies PTSD, they commit suicide.  Clearly, not using an X-card will KILL PEOPLE!!!1!!ONE!!See how horrible that is?  The fact is that this is so incredibly unlikely, that we shouldn't consider it an issue, or bring it up for discussion.  </blockquote>

Verification