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Message: <blockquote data-quote="evileeyore" data-source="post: 7824620" data-attributes="member: 1768">Then why keep glossing over the very real fact that you don't know and keep acting like it's 'super easy, barely an inconvenience'?You don't know what the X Card was thrown over.  Therefore, you can't know what is the cause.  So to continue forward and force that player to face those traumas again, because you don;t know what the X Card was thrown over is very problematic as a GM.There are only two strategies:  1 - Shut down the game and do something else.  However since you're not allowed to ask the X Card thrower questions, what that something else is is beyond me.  I mean they could then suggest a new activity, if they are up to making a suggestion unasked.  2 - Stop everything that is happening in scene and at the table, and do something else "safe in your perfect knowledge" that whatever else you move on to can't possibly further traumatize the X Card thrower.Why?  In what way do you even know that the scene is what is causing the problem?Real example:  New player came into our group.  Ten sessions in and we're all pretty on edge, the theme of the campaign this time around (albeit the Players did not know this) was 'managing failure'.  So everything was stacked against us to the point of repeated and constant failure with our PCs barely escaping and scraping by.  The GM had expected we'd get a few small marginal "least worst failures" here and there, but no, we exceeded expectations and had failed spectacularly in every endeavor.  So, there we have it, the tableau is set:Mid way in session ten during a downtime (the entirety of this session was our PCs dealing with 'downtime' stuff, trying to figure out how to continue even surviving, let alone figuring out how to deal with our enemies) new Player blows a fuse and starts yelling and then storms out.Now, we knew why the Player got upset (they were quite vocal about it), but if they'd have had an X Card, we'd have never known.  There was no scene to 'reset' or move beyond.  No other Player was acting any differently (except a few us were way more listless and tuned out due to "bloody depressing game").So Hussar, absent the actual knowledge the Player presented, had they instead silently tapped the X Card, how would you as GM have proceeded?  And no, "I would have read the room and not presented so much failure" isn't the actual answer.  The problem the Player finally decided they couldn't take had nothing to do with the campaign, but one of the other Players.Okay, so you are admitting that CiG is a terrible method of dealing with these problems, as it's response is to never ask the Player anything.No it doesn't.  As I keep repeating, all it tells you is that something is wrong.  You don't know what that something is.  To press forward happy in your perfect knowledge that just skipping this scene and never bringing up [SITUATION] again has solved this is farcical.  If the problem is the normal behavior of another Player, you have done nothing to solve the problem.  In fact, you may have just made it worse.When have I said I would demand anything?  I would ask.  If they do not wish to answer, that's fine, then knowing that I have no way to address the problem, there are two options; we take a break until the Player can at least mention what the problem is, so it can be avoided (or if it's the behavior of another Player it can be stopped/explained/interceded), or the Player needs to go (presumably somewhere where they will feel safer).There are no other non-problematic options.  If you continue forward in your perfect knowledge and present that trauma again because you don't know what it is, then it is you that are being deliberately toxic.Less that 100% but greater than 0%.In my case it's less "the X Card" and more "the X Card and Consent in Gaming and how it is presented therein".Clearly there is something about the X Card that we few find exceptionally problematic.  It's even possible that we few have mentioned this over and over and over again and that problem keeps being ignored, hyperbolically inflated, or twisted into a straw man.</blockquote>

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