Frank discussion on failures in gaming safety

[William_Nichols]

A lot of our games deal with emotionally fraught subject material, and the community has developed a variety of safety mechanics and best practices to make for safer spaces.

What we rarely discuss is the failures. Without that, it can be difficult to know what to look for as a facilitator, and what to design to avoid. This is not about wallowing in those failures, but in making them public so we can do better. Please only share ones where public discussion is acceptable for those involved.

For example: The first time I played The Tribunal, the bleed was bad and I had a panic attack. I missed a night’s sleep, and it took me a while to process it. To stress: This wasn’t the fault of the facilitator of the game. I learned a lot from it, mostly about privilege.

I’ve avoided repeating the outcome both by increasing my own emotional awareness and by better knowing my triggers. I’ve for-sure continued to LARP and have had some deep experiences there, and that’s worked out for me pretty well.

What failures have you seen? What failures have you been a part of? What did you learn from those? How can we improve the culture to better mitigate these failures?

[Jmstar]

So many.

I played in a game (The Association for the Advancement of Fairy-Tale Creatures) that, on its surface, is light and silly and harmless. The organizers didn’t spend any time on safety. It turns out one of the characters has OCD-like traits, and others mock her for them, and the person cast in the role had OCD in real life, and it did not go well.

The lesson here is that you need a safety and care protocol for even the lightest, simplest, most innocuous game, because you can never know what people are bringing to the table.

Also games that turn real life mental health issues into jokes are shitty.

[AviatrixCat]

I was playing in our light and mostly goofy 13th Age game and then a thing happened that caused me to freeze up and have decades of dysphoria crash back around my ears. If there had been an Xcard I would have slammed it, but there wasn’t. So I shouldered through and things were okay but…yeah.

Safety is important. I suck at consistently remembering to do my lectures, especially when the table is well known to each other. But I’m trying as well to always do the safety talk on camera when I run an AP online. That helps a bit.

I’ve only used the checkin system a few times but it’s really good, I want to use it more often for a lot of things.

[Haladir]

Content Warning: Gore

This was about 10 years ago, before I’d discovered non-traditional RPGs, and before I’d ever considered having to address emotional safety in RPGs…and certainly before I’d heard of the X-Card.

I was running the Pathfinder adventure path, “Rise of the Runelords.” For those unfamiliar, APs are a six-volume series of linked traditional modules to bring your Pathfinder/D&D 3.x character from level 1 to level 17 or so.

Anyway, the party was investigating some smuggling activity, and found clues that led to the local crime-boss. They broke into the guys office at night and found a grisly sight: The crime boss was dead: his naked body was mutilated and arrayed post-mortem in a particularly gruesome manner.

While describing the scene, one of my players cut me off and said that he was very much uncomfortable with what I was describing. This caught me off-guard: We were playing D&D after all, and I usually didn’t shy away from gory descriptions of fighting monsters.

We were pretty close to the end of the session anyway, so I ended it there for the night, but I asked this player to stay so we could talk about it.

He asked if there would be more, similar scenes moving forward. I said that yes, there would be: The name of the next volume of the adventure was called, “The Skinsaw Murders.” I went on to say that the plot of that adventure was to track down an undead serial killer stalking the streets of the city. I said that the inspiration for the adventure was horror films like “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Se7en” and “Kiss The Girls.” His expression told me what I needed to know: This was not an adventure for him. He went on to tell me why.

While I knew he was an archaeologist, I learned that was his second career: He had been a forensic anthropologist. (Yes, like the character “Bones” from the TV show.) He said that his first job after getting his degree was working in El Salvador for an NGO to bring to light the atrociities committed by death squads during their civil war in the 1980s. He told me that he’d excavated mass graves and taken testimonies from survivors of the real-world nightmare that was the El Salvador Civil War. After doing that work for two years, he found the work to be tearing at his soul, so he quit the field, went back to school, and got a second PhD.

He went on to say that he played RPGs for swashbuckling adventures of derring-do, and not to simulate a gritty police procedural with human murder victims… and what I had described was far too similar to the “messages” sent by the all-too-real terrorist groups he had investigated.

At the time, I was very committed to the adventure I wanted to run, and told him that I really couldn’t censor the content. He then resigned from my game. I regret that I didn’t try to re-work the adventure, substitiuting a different set of bad guys who would have served the same meta-purpose (e.g. a ring of daring cat-burglars instead of a murderous death-cult).

We are still friends, and do still game together, but we aren’t as close as we once were. That incident really hurt our friendship.

The lesson I learned: Never, ever spring disturbing content on a group without first having a discussion about theme, tone, subject matter, and expectations.

[Sarah]

It’s happened in Monsterhearts twice for me, both times when the game brought up and then relentlessly pushed on feelings of unwanted isolation/exclusion/unconsideredness. I don’t know that I’ve learned anything from that except not to put myself into certain situations and to avoid the Ghost playbook and certain Ghost moves like the plague, because feeling unconsidered is the worst feeling to have when you need to speak up (because then you can’t).

The biggest thing, I think, is that going through these situations (and one other) has just made it easier to recognize that feeling of IMPENDING DOOM when things are about to go very sideways for me. So it’s made it easier to speak up or . . . attempt to speak up, or to poll the table to get an excuse to turn things in another direction. (And that last is a good trick, I think, because it gives you time to breathe and gives you space to actually say, “Hey, actually . . .” I had a pretty near miss, also in a Monsterhearts game, that I think I avoided because I did that.)

Also, just, you cannot rely on other people to see that you’re struggling. Unless they know ahead of time to watch out for you, which is hard when you don’t know where a game will go and you’re not sure of your own lines, it just won’t happen. Most of the time you have to advocate for yourself. (But when you do have someone who will look out for you, hold on with both hands!!!)

[William_Nichols]

This is great. Thank you to everyone participating for your honesty and vulnerability.

I find it especially compelling that these failures can happen in the lightest of games, meaning we need this sort of safety in essentially every game. It’s something I’ve tried to take very seriously, and this underscores why I think it is so important.

I’m going to be at a game tonight, so won’t be monitoring. Please keep it up.

Another question is: How can we do better, both individually and collectively?

[Mathias]

In an audio only online game, I had bid my time for about half the session to pursue a Belief. When I got a chance to enter a scene I kept being interrupted (in part due to cross-talk inexperience, I’m sure) while playing a character of lower life experience but higher social status.

The outcome was not pretty as it lead to raised voices shouting over each other going clearly over the line what was fiction and what was player to player communication. An anger reaction and the following knee-jerk sulk.

Looking back, I would have given so much for some proper safety tools. Also, this is often a Veil of mine, nowadays: a character might be talked over but it’s especially important in that situation to make sure the player still has a voice. Because this is a situation where a dominant voice can actually directly enact what happens in the fiction right at the table to the other player.

I encountered a similar situation years later, with video, where I was the GM and third party to it happening. I did quickly intervene to get intentions down clearly for both player characters.

But a raised voice out of anger/frustration of someone is still a potential harm that has taken place. I still ask myself if I should have checked in later with the respective players, as well. This was a case where the X-Card was available but we had needed an O-Check-in, pause/yellow light or similar.

Also, give your fellow players space especially when your character isn’t doing so at all in a ttrpg.

[yoshi]

I find it especially compelling that these failures can happen in the lightest of games, meaning we need this sort of safety in essentially every game.

Yes. But I also think we need to be aware of HOW we bring these tools into our games. Context matters.

This past weekend I played Dialect with with the “Sing The Earth Electric” backdrop. Part of the premise is that there is no organic life. No humans, no children, no animals, nothing. I used “Lines and Veils” but also explicitly mentioned that the context we were in “No organic life”, this means that certain topics which might normally be brought up in Lines and Veils don’t have to be mentioned. There is no need to bring up “sexual violence”, “torture”, or “spiders” or many other common lines and veils. The game had zero chance of heading in that direction.

In a game about robots with zero organic life and zero chance of “sexual violence”, why should I need to bring up that I don’t want “sexual violence” in the game. Just bringing up the fact I don’t want that topic might be more vulnerability I want to share in a game that has zero chance of that coming up.

You might think about why use Lines and Veils if there is so little chance, well two things did come up.

1. Artificial Intelligences taking over other Artificial Intelligences.
2. Graphic depiction of human remains.

The first one, was something that was definitely influenced by the game we were playing.

[I actually used multiple safety tools, The Door is Always Open, Lines and Veils (which were a living document, and updatable during game), and the X-Card.]

[astralfrontier]

In a game about robots with zero organic life and zero chance of “sexual violence”, why should I need to bring up that

In a game of Masks I played last year, my PC had built robot companions for himself, including a robot girlfriend-turned-best-friend, with a fully human mind and emotional existence. An evil corporation kidnapped her and took her to one of their secret labs to be analyzed and reverse-engineered. Up until we rescued her, I don’t think it quite clicked for the table that the PC’s creations were to be regarded as people. My PC reacted as though what had happened to his friend had been a violation, which I feel it was, and it was personally tough for me as a player to go through.

Whether you feel that this scenario applies here or not, I personally would have used a safety tool at the time if I’d seen where it was going, because the feelings I got from the situation were similar. I get where I believe you’re coming from, but I feel it still goes back to “you never know what’ll happen, so why not err on the side of safety”.

[yoshi]

o “you never know what’ll happen, so why not err on the side of safety”.

Totally fair perspective. I should have explained more fully. I did use safety tools. I believe I erred on the side of safety. I’ll try to recount my safety discussion (from memory, and with some liberal removing of “ums” and “uhs”):

Okay, we are all here, and we all care about each other. Each person here is more important than the game or any part of the story?
[Checks each other player for confirmation]
Great. I’m going to use three safety tools, Open Door, Lines and Veils, and the X-Card. I know we all have used these all before, but I’m going to go over them again.
First off is the Open Door policy. If you need to get up for any reason, please feel free to, whether that’s to just stand up and stretch, go to the bathroom, get a drink, or if the content is becoming something you need to step away from, for a moment or for the rest of the game. You are more important than what is going on here.
Second is Lines and Veils. Lines are topics we don’t want in this game period. Veils are content we are okay having, but we don’t want to have on screen. Typically we’d just “fade to black” if they ever started to come up in game. As we discussed this game is about a hodge podge of robots tasked with cleaning up Earth after Humans have left with no organic life on it at all. These are living documents, we can update as needed during the game. With that context is there any content that we would like to add as either a line or veil?
[Player mentions AIs taking over AIs as a Line, I add it to the Lines category]
[Player mentions Graphic depictions of Human remains as a veil, I add it to the Veils category]
Anything else? Remember it’s a living document so we can come back and add to it later if something comes up…
Which brings me to the third tool, the X-Card.
[Passes 3 X-Cards around the table so they are in easy reach of everyone]
If there is anything that comes up in game as we play, please tap the X-Card, wave your arms, or speak up like, “hey can we X that?”. The point of the X-Card is to stop the fiction quickly, because something is close to going wrong or has already. I might ask what the specific content is, but I won’t ask why it needs to be removed. You may if you want, offer an explanation, but it is by no means necessary. We want to quickly get back to a place where everyone is safe. Then continue if possible, sometimes we might not be able to continue, and that is fine, each person here is more important than the game. This doesn’t mean that the X-Card has to be used for something extreme, it can also be used for smaller but unexpected things. For instance the most common things I X are names. That might look like, “Hey can we X out Kate as a name” or “Hey I’m not sure Richard Fartknocker is an appropriate name, it doesn’t really fit with the more serious dramatic tone we agreed to.”
Okay, remember each of us is more important than the game.

This is a slightly altered version, as I can’t actually remember exactly what I said, but it’s pretty close, as I try to say something like this before every game I facilitate.

[gene_a]

Also, just, you cannot rely on other people to see that you’re struggling. Unless they know ahead of time to watch out for you, which is hard when you don’t know where a game will go and you’re not sure of your own lines, it just won’t happen. Most of the time you have to advocate for yourself. (But when you do have someone who will look out for you, hold on with both hands!!!)

I think about that game all the time. More than any game I’ve played in the last year, that game has fundamentally changed the way I think about how my games are run.

[Bethany_H]

Ah, I know that one. I don’t play the Ghost, ever, because after one look at that playbook I was like, “Oh. Yeah. Thirteen years of that was more than enough. I don’t want to even pretend to relive it.”

[Bethany_H]

The majority of times I’ve run into things I wasn’t okay with were my own fault. I am the worst about thoughtlessly creating characters and situations that aim directly for things I don’t want to deal with. Tbh, anything I add to lines & veils is a reminder to myself, not anyone else at the table.

The few other times, I didn’t speak up because it didn’t really hit me until well after the point where bringing it up would have been constructive.

I’m not sure there’s anything I can do about either of those except… think faster?

[Mathias]

I think there may be two different things here:

One, where we feel not well with what is going on in the moment but don’t respond with making use of a safety tool.
I think that can be solved with practice and normalizing the use of them in general.

The other thing, though, doesn’t have anything to do with fast reactions? Sometimes things that happened in game only really hit me way later.
And those may best be helped through community? Places or persons to turn to with the experience.

Using L&V as a reminder for oneself sounds like a completely legitimate use of them. That’s a good reminder.

[Jmstar]

There’s a generalized and pervasive discomfort with using safety tools because of the perception that they may interrupt or derail play. This is absolutely true, they can interrupt and derail, when necessary - by design. I’ve been in games where people avoided using a tool because they didn’t want to be the one to “ruin” the game, or because they didn’t want to be the one who “couldn’t take it”. Both are sort of toxic behaviors. One solution is to normalize the use of safety tools. As an organizer you can model the behavior you want to see. I think it is a bigger social issue, though, bound up with behaviors and attitudes that transcend gaming.

[shane]

Definitely going to agree with @Jmstar on this. This is a bigger social issue and it requires intentional socialization to deal with it. I have been in games where people have ended up deeply triggered and traumatized. I have been in games where I have realized in retrospect instead of making use of a safety tool I doubled down. I want to not be that person any more. I say “the players are more important than the game” and I am going to start really living that. Is my use of a safety tool going to interrupt something? (whether I am using it for myself or for someone I see in need) I don’t care. I’m going to interrupt.

I have been in my job for over thirteen years. I still ask stupid questions in meetings. Why? Sometimes I don’t know the answer. But I have stopped worrying about looking dumb - because what I know is is that in reality I am not the only person in the room who needed that question answered. I believe at this point - if I am feeling like I should use a safety tool - I am not the only one at the table who is feeling that way and it is better that maybe I annoy someone with an interruption than I and others continue experiencing discomfort.

[Jmstar]

Here’s another example of failure: I carefully co-organized a weekend gaming event, with a detailed timetable and thoughtful arrangements to maximize productive play. We included and normalized making the games safer with standardized tools we carefully practiced and implemented. And right before the first play session we had a total meltdown between two groups of participants over a political point that left both sides enraged and one side quitting the weekend. It turns out we had what happens in games well covered, but hadn’t designed the event outside of play at all.

[Jmstar]

There is nothing that legitimizes and validates the use of a safety tool like seeing one used simply and well. Give others this gift!

[noellarh]

This is a little bit different because I was triggered by the structure of a game rather than the content. I played Sunslayer Moonslayer. The long and short of how to play (and we may have misinterpreted the rules but this is how we did it) is that each round is essentially an argument between the two players, and you are arguing to win. I am bad at arguing, have a lot of hangups about being bad at arguing, and I lost all ~5 rounds. I didn’t realize how upset this made me until after the game was over. Even though I was playing with a trusted person and we did have safety tools, I didn’t realize how to use safety tools against the game itself.

Like, to show the kind of impact this had on me, it has soured my rpg experience for a while. That happened in january, and I have played ~2 sessions since then (that in addition to school and health concerns restricting time and focus).

[Stentor_Danielson]

Building off what @noellarh said, I think a lot of the current safety tool discussion is too narrowly focused on game content rather than the structure or execution of the game.

My worst example isn’t anywhere near what some other folks have described, but I think it illustrates the point. I was playing a Monsterhearts campaign where I was the Infernal, and the MC decided that my Dark Power was going to be the Big Bad of the season. So he was using the strings I’d given the Dark Power to slam me and the other PCs with extreme deadly situations, forcing me to give the Dark Power more strings to end them, which just set up the next round – with the ultimate goal of breaking my character’s will. I could have X-carded the content of any specific threat if I’d wanted to – “hey man, I’m not OK with playing characters trapped in a burning car” or whatever. But the specific content wasn’t the issue. It was the overall structure of the campaign that made me feel like my character wasn’t able to actually do anything. I found myself spending the whole campaign looking for ways that I could have my character sacrifice herself to end the threat, and while I’m usually a big fan of “go out in a blaze of glory” storylines, this wasn’t that.