Examples of Safety, Diversity, Empathy in games

#21

There are so many places in the world with different views that it would be impractical for a designer to try some kind of localisation. It’s irrealistic. I think this is just something that needs to be solved at the rulebook level. For example, a simple paragraph in the rulebook acknowledging that the racial/ethical examples (with said examples perhaps only in the rulebook, not the playbooks) are representations of the authors cultural views on others and that they have no universal cultural validity would be a good start to avoid the feeling of cultural imposition on the author’s side. As it is now, just saying “other” with a blank space in front isn’t good enough. It feels like an afterthought, something that is not being taken seriously by the authors.

Honestly, I don’t think there is any perfect solution to this, but I think that what we have now isn’t good enough. Does that make sense?

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#22

I also think pick lists seem like a bad way to solve this problem. They might make sense if you are trying to run a survey and need “clean” data, but for a game I’m not so sure. (My daughter is Persian and Tamil. Like is that gonna show up on some pick list?) There are probably other ways to push the issue that aren’t quite so heavy handed. The game could just explicitly say “you are all racialized individuals” and leave it up to the player to decide what that means. (Or call out whatever your expectations are for the final group composition.)

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#23

Yeah, I definitely hear that; on the other hand, I know some people (myself included, even) work a lot better when given possible explicit options to think about. I think that’s one big reason why PbtA games do the whole “here’s a list of options, you can pick one (or make up your own, technically)”; it gets players thinking about alternate takes really quickly, stuff that doesn’t normally occur to them. I know that the Urban Shadows lists definitely had a few options that made me go “oh yeah, I never thought about that!” (The South Asian ancestry, for example.)

So like, leaving it up to the players can also backfire, if they’re unsure about what options are already out there, and they’d probably default to the 2-3 things they know the best. (In the US, for instance, that’d probably be white, Latinx, and black.)

But it’s definitely true that no list can be exhaustive, and that’s a weakness of giving explicit lists. I do feel that approach is a definite step up from prior attempts, though.

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#24

I think @Curubethion brings up a positive point about the idea of using a list. A lot of folks may be interested in picking a different ethnicity, but don’t think about it unless it is blatantly stated. If given 10 options to pick from or an unlisted infinite, you are probably going to see more people pick one from the list of 10 because they have a more tangible grasp on what is there. Again, though, a player isn’t limited by the options on the list and it should absolutely be open for folks to pick whatever they like, but it may help guide those that typically default to white to consider a different option.

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#25

I want to give credit to this thread. Thinking abiut empathy in games revitalized a dormant idea that I now finished for the Wizard2k19 game jam.

So the idea is humans took magic from a forest and then exiled the fears/memories they didn’t want to the same forest, locking it away. The magic and emotions mixed together into a Poison magic in the wood making monsters and dangers come to life.

Players are going into the forest, but instead of slaying monsters they want to comfort the Poison’s fear. But I took some inspiration from Dream Askew and the players also each play an aspect of the Poison warping the woods. As the heroes prove themselves to the Poison, it reveals more about itself and can even help them out.

In terms of empathy, it’s sort of taking the idea of “walk in another’s shoes” but doing it with the characters you play at the same time.

It was a really interesting design exercise for me to try and make something with “build empathy” as a core idea. The document still needs revising but can be checked out here.

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#26

  • If memory serves, The Watch has a prompt the MC is meant to read aloud which includes Safety, as well as discussion of what themes to incorporate.

  • A lot of published LARPs do the “Facilitator: Read this aloud” thing, which works pretty well in my experience. I saw this most recently in Jay Treat’s “A Pirate’s Life”, where the facilitator read-aloud specifically talks through The Door is Always Open and other safety tools.

My conjecture is games coming out of a strong GM tradition will do this less, as the cultural conceit is to trust in the GM’s arbitration. Getting away from that, especially with a single point of failure, seems incredibly virtuous and something we’re seeing in the LARPy freeform space more and more.

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#27

Flotsam: Adrift Amongst the Stars does a great job of hitting all three:

  • Safety tools are discussed early on in the book, right after the premise and game overview; there’s also a group read-aloud teaching script that addresses safety
  • Diversity is baked into each playbook (e.g., “Woman, man, nonbinary, transitioning, genderqueer,
    feminine, masculine, neutral, androgynous, hidden, other.”) and widespread in the artwork
  • Empathy features directly in the mechanics, including a move called Displaying Your Heart

The book is fantastic in all sorts of ways, but its approach to these three topics really jumped out at me.

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#28

Here’s a safety overview example from a recent freeform larp:

Safety

Friendship

Always start with friendship. Make sure everyone is comfortable and has the tools to stay that way. Playing pretend - and that’s what you’re doing - requires a high level of trust! Trust that your friends are going to do their best to give you an experience you’ll love, and work hard to do the same for them. Approach the game with respect and love.

The Three Ironclad Safety Rules

There are three ironclad rules to playing this game.

  1. People are more important than the game.

  2. The door is always open. No matter what’s happening in the game, take a break or stop playing entirely if you ever feel the need. Conversely, let people do what they need to do without questioning - it’s their business; you can just keep playing.

  3. Slow it down if you need to. If you are ever uncomfortable - if things get too intense, or too weird, or too anything - say “slow down.” If someone says “slow down” to you, take a step back and take it down a notch. If you aren’t sure why you are slowing down, ask. You can say “slow down” for others, too!

Physical Violence

“On screen” violence is limited to fighting with fists; both parties check in and the fight happens in slow motion, with the victim deciding the outcome. Any other kind of violence must happen off “off screen”. It’s likely there will be no physical violence at all.

Helpful Advice

Here are some tips to help you jump right in:

Be obvious. Just do what comes naturally and say the most obvious thing. It isn’t a creativity contest, and deliberately trying to be surprising or funny usually guarantees that you won’t be.

Listen. Use the information the game and other players provide. Part of helping others have a great time is making their characters interesting, and the best way to do that is to listen and use what you hear.

Be kind. Respect your friends, share the spotlight, and do your best to make everyone else feel awesome. If this isn’t happening for you, remember the three ironclad rules and say something!

Ask questions. If you aren’t sure what is going on, ask. If you aren’t sure someone is having a good time, ask. If you aren’t sure your idea will be fun for your friend, ask.

If this sort of game is new to you, you should know that new players are, without exception, the best players. It’s just a fact.

If You Are Facilitating

Understand that there is no way to be 100% safe. There is no way to completely anticipate a game’s impact on the players, including yourself.

Express your expectation of love and trust. Make it clear that responsibility for safer play falls to everyone, but model the behavior you want.

Be clear about the game’s parameters. This includes play time, general tone, touch boundaries (set them by consensus) and any expectations the game makes of players.

Be transparent about the game’s content, both real and fictional.

Discuss and demonstrate “The door is always open” and “slow down”, as well as touch boundaries and how to act out violence.

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#29

I’ve been paying attention to what happens with race pick lists in games — house games and at cons — for a year or so, to try to decide what to do in my own designs. Unfortunately, my experience has been that in games with race pick lists, all the white players almost always pick white. The POC players pick a variety of things, which they probably would have anyway.

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#30

Does anyone have examples of a game that focuses on social class differences particularly well?

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#32

Why do you think this is the case?

(Not intended as a loaded question in any way – I’m genuinely curious.)

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#33

To be honest, I’m not that much of a “why” kind of thinker when it comes to design – I try a design strategy based on a guess of what I think it might do, and then I play-test repeatedly to see if my attempt achieved the desired effect. It’s probably my background in computer programming showing. From what I’ve observed (which is, of course, a limited sample), I think race pick lists are an understandable attempt at increasing the diversity of player characters…that doesn’t actually achieve the desired effect.

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#34

I don’t have any answers on why, but I will tell you as someone who runs LOTS of games, this is true. White people almost always play white characters (although I think it’s getting better as the conversation around playing diverse characters has improved) and PoC play lots of different races and ethnicities. I suspect part of it comes down to white folks feeling like they are going to do something wrong, which, a legit concern. But I like to think I make a lot of space at my table for getting things wrong so long as you are approaching it in the right spirit. And like i said, I do think it’s getting better.

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#35

@Jmstar You’ve got a bunch of experience designing, running, & playing in freeform games with strong safety mechanics.

We often talk about those and examples of play. We rarely talk about the failures. I think such a frank discussion would be really beneficial, to see what harm and pitfalls to look out for.

Any interest in walking us through some of those?

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#36

In my first session of Uncanny Echo with a group of total RPG neophytes (all white guys), one played an Indian man, one played an Asian woman, and the one playing a white guy made him Jewish. Pretty sure that was all the result of the pick list (even the last was inspired by the diversity of the other PCs).

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#37

A “frank discussion on failures” is a fantastic suggestion … but one I think deserves to be it’s own topic.

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#38

Many reasons regarding white dude choices, said as a white dude (but I’m not all white dudes, of course). Part of it might be fear of fucking up: if I choose to play a black woman and fall into some tropes, I’d be mortified and might offend someone. So, you play it safe and play yourself. Especially with D&D groups, I’ve experienced playing non-human women result in ugly behavior toward my character, so I could see people hesitate to play non-white dudes with unfamiliar groups if they are not up for fighting that attitude at that time.

Next, there are people that just play themselves. No effort applied, they play themselves by default

Then, of course, there are racists. And people who are oblivious to their own racism. They just don’t want to play any non-whites. Some of those are also in the ‘I play myself by default’ category above, of course.

For me, I tend to listen to what others are playing and mix it up. My go-to of late is to play someone of Arab, Turkish, or Latinx heritage. Often I play immigrants, since I have some experience with immigration.

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#39

I should edit the playbooks and take out white and see what happens…

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#40

In my current design project, despite having a very racially diverse set of NPCs, I don’t have a race question on the character sheets at the moment, because it turns out to be a very weird question when dealing with time travel. There’s an entire population in the game (Visigoths) who have arrived from the year 410 into 1996 – are they…white? Not according to the contemporary construction of whiteness? Should I ask everyone what continent(s) their ancestors are from?

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#41

I’m game, that sounds interesting and useful.

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