Examples of Safety, Diversity, Empathy in games

[yoshi]

More games with safety, diversity, and empathy built into the game itself.

Does anyone have any examples of games that do this?

So depending on which portion of the original statement there are lots of different examples.

1. Safety
   a. The start is including Safety tools and safety tool discussions into the core texts of books. This includes things like, The X-Card, Script Change, Lines and Veils, Subject Matter Discussions,CATS, Same Page Tool, Open Door Policy, Debriefs, and others. Just having them in the core text helps to normalize them and the discussion that safety is part of the game.
   b. Having the tools themselves worked into the game. Microscope has a section built in where the players include or exclude certain content. For the Queen has the ability to pass a card onto the next player, or just remove it from the game entirely.

2. Diversity
   a. Urban Shadows - The ethnicity line has a bunch of options, but “White” is last, skewing the “default” else where. The setting of modern urban cities is also great, because we can see 2nd, 3rd (and further generations) of people and how their cultural background affects their modern experience without it being a foreign land, those PoC are here right now in familiar places too. I’m half Japanese, but I can’t speak Japanese, I’ve never been to Japan, I probably know less about anime and other Japanese pop culture than a lot of other folks… but I do know about growing up looking different than others, having some different rituals and traditions at home, eating different food, etc. I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable being the “expert” on ancient Japan, but I do know about being an Japanese American in California.
   b. Games that have settings that are not just fantasy Europe. Thousand Arrows is about “samurai action and tragedy in the Japanese Warring States Period”, Mendez has a great article on sensitivity, respect and appropriation. It’s definitely worth a read.

3. Empathy
   a. For me, I see this often in games with options or moves about being vulnerable, opening up to other characters, having character scenes or downtime scenes, that may not “move the plot” along.
   b. Lady Blackbird’s refresh scenes. Any “Comfort or Support” moves, like from Hearts of Wulin or “Reach Out” from Night Witches. One Child’s Heart is all about empathy. The #sadmechjam contest basically had empathy built into the premise. So while I haven’t looked at or played anywhere near all the 177 games that came out of it, I bet quite a few had empathy designed into them.

[klintron]

Thanks, that’s all great stuff.

re: Safety: I was just thinking about the idea of “let’s try another way” (is that originally from Archipelago?). I don’t know if it was created w/ safety in mind, but it can be used that way. Are there PbtA games that have explicit safety moves? (“When something in the fiction makes you uncomfortable in a bad, tap the X card or say ‘let’s try another way’ and propose…”)

re: Diversity: That’s a great point about Urban Shadows. I have reservations about the idea of an ethnicity list though because it’s impossible to include every ethnicity.

[klintron]

Another idea: putting a dedicated space for writing down lines and veils on the GM sheets.

[shane]

Let me push you a bit on your reservations… Is that because you are worried that you the designer would be attacked for not giving enough options? (It seems like you could give a list and then a blank line?)

The thing is: if you don’t have that on the sheet people are (in their minds) almost certainly going to default to white. Whether that is in relation to their character or another one. (And if it is not explicit tge player’s mind’s-eye idea of their character could be vastly different than that of anyone else at the table.)

[yoshi]

I have reservations about the idea of an ethnicity list though because it’s impossible to include every ethnicity

Yes, it is impossible, but if you include NOTHING. What are people going to “default” to? Given the demographics and the media landscape… I would not be happy or content with what actually gets presented, and what does that tell us about how we envision “white” as the default?

Besides the actual last option in Urban Shadows is actually a blank line, “white” is just the last specified option.

[klintron]

I’m not worried about being attacked so much as worried that including an “other” option would be, well, othering. A blank line is better than “other,” but I feel like there’s got to be a better option besides either doing nothing or an incomplete list that condenses so many different ethnic identities into a few broad & incomplete categories. But I agree that an incomplete list with a blank line is better than nothing.

[yoshi]

Are there PbtA games that have explicit safety moves? (“When something in the fiction makes you uncomfortable in a bad, tap the X card or say ‘let’s try another way’ and propose…”)

Hmmm… this is interesting, there are a LOT of PbtA games, and I haven’t read or played anywhere close to all of them. But I can’t think of any that have created move that does it. Many have safety discussions and talk about specific safety tools, but as far as I know none have put a move on the basic move sheet, “When something comes up in game that you do not want, for any reason, tap the X-Card. The active speaker will stop speaking. Another player may ask what the content is to remove confusion about what should be avoided going forward. You do not need to specify WHY the content needs to be removed, but you may if you want. Once confusion is cleared, and everyone is once again safe, collectively decide where to start fiction again.”

[klintron]

Another issue with an explicit list of specific ethnic categories is that they tend to be geography specific. I don’t remember if Urban Shadows is explicitly meant to be North American, but its list would be less relevant in, say, Lagos or Shanghai. It’s still probably better than nothing especially given the probability that most games probably aren’t going to get a lot of play outside the anglophone world. You could address that somewhat with different versions for different translations of a text, and by including a section in the text that encourages people to revise the list to suit their local needs.

[Pedro]

The solution to this is to simply have a section called “Ethnicity/Race” and leave a blank line there for the player to fill up. The options in PbtA games right now are the result of a very “American-centric” view of race that does not take into account how people in other parts of the World view race and ethnicity (let alone alone that race and ethnicity are different things).

Therefore, just leave concepts of race and ethnicity up to the people at the table. We’re all grown ups, you don’t need a list for dummies. Arguments based on PbtA “tradition” or “aesthetics” are poor arguments. Being inclusive is precisely to recognise that what we are doing now is imposing North American concepts on everyone else.

[yoshi]

“American-centric” view of race

Yes, totally agree.

Arguments based on PbtA “tradition” or “aesthetics” are poor arguments.

Also agree.

Being inclusive is precisely to recognise that what we are doing now is imposing North American concepts on everyone else.

Also agree.

The simple blank line is a simple solution. My concern is, and yes this might be an entirely North American concern, but if we leave it blank with no other information or context you will get a lot of people just leaving it blank or defaulting. And I personally don’t like the perceived default, at least here, I want to actively oppose that. I think the grown up solution needs to recognize that if we do nothing, then more often than not we are letting the status quo stand.

That status quo is that I’m the only PoC at the table, and most of the time everyone else is white AF. Maybe it’s different in different regions of the world, but right now I still see lots of “feedback” of “why do we need Captain Marvel we already got Wonder Woman? Do we really need another PoC super hero movie, we got Black Panther?”. I’d rather shift the away from the default being white, and right now, for me, we need to make active work to do that. A simple blank line for ethnicity won’t push hard enough towards a environment I want to see.

[klintron]

What if it was something like “Social status (check all that apply): Ethnic minority, ethnic majority, religious minority, religious majority, non-religious, citizen, non-citizen, poor, middle class, wealthy, highly educated, from a prominent family…”

[shane]

The problem with that list is that none of those options say “not white.” Even “ethnic minority” could still be a white person.

If you are a designing a game, you get to decide what is important to you. What you put in it says a lot about what is important and what you don’t put in it says almost as much about what isn’t.

If you don’t feel like race and representation are things you want to touch in your game that is totally your prerogative. There are many games out there that have made a similar choice. Those are not games that are challenging the status quo. And that is totally fine.

If you want your game to challenge the status quo then make it do that. Making players uncomfortable is okay (assuming they buy in).

On the other hand if you have a bunch of world building before this part and you explicitly say in the rules to have a discussion about race and power and the like and explicitly say to bring that into character creation that would be a legit option as well.

Lists to pick from are there because of an assumption that discussing that stuff in detail isn’t necessarily the focus of character creation. It is a fast way to get into the game. But what is on those lists does say something about the game.

I mean you could say: choose a heritage from the list on page 241. (And have that be an exhaustive list of ethnicities.)

[Cass]

The #sadmechjam contest basically had empathy built into the premise. So while I haven’t looked at or played anywhere near all the 177 games that came out of it, I bet quite a few had empathy designed into them.

This is a really good highlight. I would love to see more game jams with that empathetic focus. The game I ended up making was an idea that had been rattling around for years but I couldn’t see how to make it work in a game context. It speaks to the power of examples in design prompts and the games we see (as the other #sadmechjam games had a huge influence on my own approach). After that jam, I noticed I’ve been thinking a lot more around empathy and positive emotion/relationship building.

I just played Interstitial for the first time this week. One of the main mechanics is building relationship links and then using those mechanically. 3 of the 4 possibilities are positive (heart, light, and mastery which is teacher/student based) and the entire group actually tipped towards only using those to form new links. It not only gave a positive tone to the fiction, but it affected how we worked together to make the story fit all of our characters because we wanted to feed into those specific links.

It’s another example of a game that got me thinking about positive empathy building through mechanics and now I’m excited to see more.

[klintron]

I think the issue I’m running into is that I’m trying to come up with something that’s going to be relevant to all cultures and that’s just not a realistic goal. It probably makes more sense to think about a particular games goals and what the game is about. Urban Shadows does that admirably, even if it can be universally applied to any city in the entire world.

[Bogus]

This thread as an absolutely fantastic read! I have a lot of thoughts about this so let me break it down.

1. Safety - So I’ve been building my own personal universal game system for about 6 months now and one of the very first things I felt was necessary was included rules on providing a safe and comfortable environment by drafting a manifesto of rules, boundaries and thoughts of tone and direction for the campaign. I wanted to make sure that a large focus was placed on setting expectations of what will be happening in the campaign but I also wanted the players to have input and say on those expectations.

It is so important to put the players needs into consideration when it comes to sensitive topics. What is funny is that at the time I conceived of this, I had no exposure to the indie scene so I felt this was a very novel idea and am so happy to see that it is more and more commonplace here. We need this more than anything!

2. Diversity - This is a very tough topic to tackle, especially being a CIS white male. I feel like running real world cultural settings is difficult without a lot of consideration and input from people within those cultural settings. Usually what I do when I want to tackle diversity and the role of race in a setting, I do so with fictional races. I do things like humanize the “monster” races and put more complex social situations into the campaign to get players thinking or make it more relatable for players.

As for putting diversity into the mechanics itself, I do agree with folks that it is important to have diversity amongst fictional races as well. Allowing players to pick a race like dwarf, but also allow them to an ethnicity within that. Not just give players this option but as a GM point it out specifically during character creation to leave the door open for a player to be what they want to be and not feel compelled to be the “default white.”

In the end, diversity can be attained by including people from various backgrounds into your group and having their experiences represented in the game to relate to. Reach out to those in the community for guidance and perspective so that diversity is represented in game maturely and with compassion.

3. Empathy - Designing empathy into a game is incredibly tough because people tend to pick and choose what they like in rpgs. I feel like setting an example as a GM through communiication emphasizes the opportunity for players to be empathetic. Be open, honest and compassionate to the players needs through utilizing the options previously mentioned throughout the thread.

By doing so, you can set the stage to make the players WANT to use those empathy options in a game.

As for building empathy into your game, you can incentivize players with rewards. Implement a token system that allows players to earn tokens through using empathy in the setting and with the characters and players. These tokens can be used to let players have more agency in events, redeeming them to have a moment to control the story more directly.

When looking for inspiration on empathy, I look to two of the most influential games that I know that implement empathy into the game itself, The Ultima series and Undertale.

In Ultima, the setting itself revolves around virtues and the adherence of those virtues, rewarding players by giving them power for being compassionate, honorable and the like. Virtue also played the role in moving the plot along, not letting players move forward and succeed without adherence to the virtues.

With the game undertale, it utilized empathy through character development and a mercy option in combat, but also through offering the option to exist with a complete lack of empathy but holding players accountable for their actions.

I feel like offering opportunities to be empathetic, through writing, character development and through in world incentivization are a big facet to encouraging players to be empathetic. You need to offer choice to players, hold them accountable for their actions and set that stage to make it socially acceptable to be empathize with the game world and with each other.

I feel like when you use all of the tools at your disposal, empathy just becomes a natural part of play.

All in all. I love all the talk in the thread and it further proves just how awesome this community is through rational, mature discussion! You folks rock!!

[tomes]

My favorite example of a game that does this in a built-in way is For The Queen.

Safety: An X-card mechanic is built-in, and allows you to remove any question prompt card, or content, from the game. This can be done at any time by any player. Because it can be done for any reason, whether that’s due to being uncomfortable with content, or just due to tone, I found that this use of it normalizes the mechanic, and in the over 40 times I’ve played, it’s been using dozens of times. In many instances it is the first time someone has activated the X-card, and most people I talked to agree that this is milestone that should be much easier to hit! There is additionally an option, when receiving a question card, to pass the card, instead of remove / X it from the game. This also allows people to push-it-along for someone else to either pass, or X, or answer. Both of these allow for player curated and control of the content.

Diversity: For The Queen also contains a very diverse set of Queen art. Admittedly they are mostly humans, but they are in different styles and from different cultures, ages, and aspects. Although I personally like playing without the Queen cards (theater of the mind), there it stands.

Empathy: The question prompts themselves are all very much based around vulnerabilities and relationship and feelings that you have with the queen, each other, and the situation. They play straight into that territory. The game mostly lies - in my opinion - in the ability for anyone to ask the active player any clarifying questions… this allows all of us to probe those boundaries and deeper thoughts and feelings around the people involved, including asking fairly leading questions, but always with the safety tools available, described above.

There are many other examples of recent games starting to make some foray into including tools and diversity in a similar way. I’d say other standout games are Companions’ Tale and Good Society, which tackle these 3 topics similarly, if sometimes a bit differently.

[Christo]

And specific to Urban Shadows there’s nothing to say that you can’t hack the playbooks to fit a given culture and language, adjusting the names and presentations of characters.

[Christo]

Well, I guess I’m a dummy, because I like the lists and last time I checked I’m very much an adult.

I like the way the lists tune me to the feel the designer is looking to achieve, the way they serve as a springboard for creativity, especially if my creativity is at a low. Also, the lists make it clear that there is a place for latinx, Blacks, south-east and south-west Asians, as well as transgenders in these games: it’s an inclusive if not exhaustive list. Maybe you don’t need them and would have made the same choices without these lists, but there are many that wouldn’t make those choices without encouragement.

[Pedro]

Well, I guess I’m a dummy, because I like the lists and last time I checked I’m very much an adult.

I like the way the lists tune me to the feel the designer is looking to achieve, the way they serve as a springboard for creativity, especially if my creativity is at a low. Also, the lists make it clear that there is a place for latinx, Blacks, south-east and south-west Asians, as well as transgenders in these games: it’s an inclusive if not exhaustive list. Maybe you don’t need them and would have made the same choices without these lists, but there are many that wouldn’t make those choices without encouragement.

Christo,
the issue is not with the list per se. Like Yoshi pointed out (and I think correctly), having a list there in the playbook at least forces you to consider not defaulting, since you do have to choose something. The issue is that the list is just another form of “defaultism” in the sense that it basically telegraphs “we in North America think like this about race/ethnicity and we don’t care if it makes sense to you or not”. In other words, it ends up being yet another instance of cultural colonialism. With all the talk about cultural awareness, inclusivity, etc, the PbtA community ends up doing the opposite in this specific case. Good intentions, bad implementation. Works great if you’re from the Americas, but makes no sense to anyone else. It gives non-Americans the middle finger. “See the World like we do and stop whining. Trust us, we thought a lot about it, you’re just failing to see it.” It’s patronising, and I think the community can do better than this.

Notice that the issue with that list is not that it it isn’t exhaustive; it’s that the options that are there don’t even make sense outside of the Americas. What you call a Latino makes sense only in the the Americas and is at odds with the way the term is used e.g. in Europe (did you know that for an European a Latino/Latin is not a race but a cultural heritage, and that the Latinos/Latins are the French, the Italians, The Portuguese, The Spanish, and the Romanians? It’s only in that context that Central and South America is Latin. In other words, the term as used in the Americas makes no sense here unless you’ve been watching a lot of American TV). And what’s a south-asian? Is it an Indian? A Tibetan? An Indonesian? Perhaps for a North American they “all look the same”, but certainly not for them, not to mention how offensive the suggestion probably is for people from those areas (so they have to open up their brand new PbtA game, look at those racial suggestions, and roll their eyes for a while, taking a deep breath not to throw the book out of the window).

These games are being designed with a particular market in mind. Mark Truman said as much in a thread in the Slack servers some months ago, in which I was talking about this same subject. You see, I don’t have anything against it, but at least let’s be honest about it and stop pretending.

I don’t know if my argument was clear, Christo, but I hope you see that my point has nothing to do with having a list per se as some kind of crutch.

[shane]

So would pick lists meant for different loacles make sense? Get in touch with people in-the-know for those specific locals and ask them to work with you to put together appropriate lists? Then have different sets of the playbooks for players from different loacles?