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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7382429" data-attributes="member: 4937">Role Playing, before it became a term for a sort of game, was most commonly used to refer to a form of organized psychotherapy.  One thing I actually refuse to do as a GM running games meant for entertainment is be anyone's therapist.  If it really is the case that you have PTSD and I trigger that inadvertently, I don't really consider that my fault.  I greatly sympathize with your situation, but if the game system determines that as a result of a failed horror check, a character has a heart attack and dies, and it turns out that your parent died of a heart attack in front you as a child and suddenly this is triggering horrible memories or even flashbacks for you - I adamantly insist that this is not my fault and I did not have to foresee that.  Moreover, I adamantly insist that if you have some sort of emotional issue, that you not be using my table to work out those issues unless you can do it in such a way that it doesn't interfere with the enjoyment of a game which, at it's heart is meant to be a recreational activity.   If it turns out you have PTSD because of some traumatic experience, I can totally empathize with that.  If it turns out you are phobic of spiders or dogs or the number 13, well honestly, that's tough but that's not really my problem.   I don't think that it means that that I'm under some sort of moral obligation to research ahead of time all the potential mental illnesses you may be suffering from and make an allowance for that.  Frankly, I don't want you to disclose those to me up front because I don't want my first impression of you to be, "The person suffering from all that trauma."  Rather, you are under an obligation regardless of your emotionally traumatic past, your war experiences, you childhood abuse, or whatever your particular peculiarities are to handle those personal issues in a way that doesn't disturb, disrupt, or frighten the group.   We've all got hurts and pains in our past, and some more than others, but this is a game.  Period.  Nonnegotiable.   No matter how much sympathy I might have for that, this is a freaking game.   Everyone at the table has the reasonable expectation that you aren't going to suffer panic attacks or hallucinations or demonstrate anger management issues as a result of playing it, and everyone at the table has the reasonable expectation that unless some 'trigger' really comes to the level of panic attacks or hallucinations for you, that you aren't going to get super distraught by something that happens in the game and make mountains out of molehills.  If in fact you do this, IMO it is not me or the other characters that have made the table a non-safe place, but rather it is you that have.  Any apologies would not be owed primarily to you, but by you to the rest of the table.   I would hope that we could all be mature about your emotional problems and sympathize with the reasons why, but whatever the issue the moment you start treating me like the bad guy because you have emotional problems you are struggling with and I have to worry about violent acts or you otherwise trying to avenge yourself on me it's you making me feel unsafe.On the exact opposite end of that spectrum, as your GM I promise not to be working out any social or emotional dysfunction I might have at the table as a goal of play.   You sure as heck as a player don't need to learn about whatever problems I have in my past, whatever hangups I have, or be made to endure some sort of self-therapy that I'm engaging in rather than running an enjoyable game.   I implicitly promise to not be insane.  I do understand some people have gone to conventions and found out that the person running the game wasn't actually sane, and that does sound like a horrible experience, but if encountering an insane person while gaming damaged you so much emotionally that you now are triggered regularly by gaming perhaps you should just leave gaming.Tangentially to all of that, for adults, I generally run a game that is PG-13.  There is a lot of mature content in my games, but it tends to be handled clinically or by suggestion rather than dwelled on as a graphic act.   Sexuality, if it encroaches on the play, is always handled by suggestion with fade to black.   Graphic violence usually happens off screen.  But pretty much, I expect that everyone at the table that could watch a PG-13 superhero movie like say 'Wonder Woman' or a rated R war movie that deals frankly with the horrors of war like say 'Saving Private Ryan' should be able handle anything that comes up at the table.  Acts of depravity by PC's are not forbidden per se, but if they were to become routine then I'd start to really worry about the mental health of the player, and at the very least talk to them privately about toning it down.   Foul language is expected to be rare and to pass the 'Gone with the Wind Test' or 'Princess Bride' test of being necessary to the scene.  If you want to play a character that for in game reasons 'cusses like a sailor', then you are expected to use in game oaths that are largely meaningless or even comic in the real world.   I say 'tangentially to all that', because I actually consider that a wholly separate subject, which I suspect some will be baffled by.  But in fact I don't think the reason you tone down violence, sexuality, profanity or subjects like that has in fact anything to do with whether the persons at the table are 'strong enough to handle it' or anything of that sort.  In the proper context, I can discuss any of that with frankness.  It's not subject matter too intense for my delicate ears, nor really do I think any adult should treat it as too much for their delicacy.  The delicate handling of it has nothing to do with that, and to borrow a word misued in another thread, has to do with the sacred.When running the game for younger players, the content is handled accordingly.  The movie version of a game for 12 year olds should be no worse than PG, and preferably on the lighter end of the PG scale.  The movie version of a game for 6 year olds or 8 year olds should be rated G, and any violation of that should be primarily for 'intense situations' on the lines of a movie like 'Coraline' where the rating is owed to be scary and not anything that actually happens on screen.   And even then, that should be done in consideration of the kid's ability to handle the macabre and sinister. In short, I don't think that the GM is necessarily under any obligation to address or disclose specific 'sensitive content'.   The GM probably has some obligation to state up front the sort of game that is being run, whether 'horror' or 'fantasy' or whatever, and the GM has some lesser obligation to explain to adults roughly where he's comfortable with the lines being drawn with respect to play, for which I find the movie rating system ideal.   The GM has probably a stronger obligation to do this when he is running an organized game for strangers.  And I personally would put the onus on this on the convention organizers to make sure that they have some sort of content disclosure requirements similar to what is used in comics or movies or other media so that their customers can make informed choices, and so that they have the opportunity to potentially catch anyone running a table that might be doing something that doesn't reflect well on the community or on their convention.  But I wouldn't expect the convention organizers to extend that content disclosure requirements out to the level of "has scenes with beer consumed in a tavern, barking dogs, heart attacks, and galley slaves".   I suspect a lot of people will think this is a really callous stand and that this means I'm wholly lacking in empathy.  I'm not.  If your phobic of spiders, I know what it means to be afraid.   I can sympathize with that.  But that doesn't mean you get to erase spiders from the imagined world.  At best it means that if a spider comes into the game, I'll try to handle it clinically in the way I would any other tough subject out of respect for your weakness.  Fundamentally though however sympathetic I am, you don't get use your weaknesses to take control of the game.  Your weakness isn't a trump card that overrides every other consideration, and especially the enjoyment of everyone else at the table.   If you are so phobic of spiders that the mere mention of them makes it impossible for you to play a game, that's something you need to work on, but not at my table.  There are six or eight other players at the table that don't have that problem and aren't bringing that problem to the table.</blockquote>

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