Thread by @RuffleJax

Thread the first: safety backlash.

Y'all have seen my constant nattering on fash and alt-whiters getting mad about the "meltdowns" I've written for V5 and CtL2e and other, similar, games. Those same lads have melted down over @ShannaGermain 's Consent In Gaming.

It's pretty easy to dismiss them, most of the time. The backlash bois down to "BUT MY FREE SPEECH" and misses the critical point that these are SUGGESTIONS and writers do not have the resources or the desire to be table cops

Look, if you hurt your friends, it's on you

If I make fun of you, it's not because you won't use the safety rules. It's because you've taken something that is meant to be an optional splat, like Libris Mortis or Races of the Wild for D&D 3.5, and turned it into "THE SJWS ARE COMING TO TAKE MY FUN HOW DO WE STOP THEM"

tldr: this section of the thread boils down to "if you don't like safety mechanics, don't use them, I guess. You'll almost certainly find people you want to play with. I can't show up at your table and take away your books for being an asshole, I don't have the time."

But that's not the only thing I want to talk about in this thread.

I'm part of a KULT fan group on Facebook. As a writer for the game, it keeps me abreast of what people want -- plus, let's be real, I'm a fan of the game (both old and new) too.

When Consent In Gaming came out, the group (maybe predictably) exploded. People (mostly men) started raging that SJWs were taking their toys away, that this ruined KULT (even though the book was written as a system-agnostic add-on) and they hated its existence.

That's not all though.

One guy wrote a rebuttal on GDocs, his own version of Consent In Gaming. He said he was going to do it right, without any of the SJW nonsense.

This is what I want to talk about, because his response FASCINATED me.

The doc was written in a pretty similar format to CIG, but it covered "things to use in your game". I guess that's the best way to put it.

Two of the "horrific" suggestions to "traumatize" your players were haunted castles and piles of dead babies.

When asked, he stated that he was genuinely afraid that SJWs were going to take his haunted castles and piles of dead babies because they just couldn't handle anything that wasn't pretty and clean and neat, and besides, it's all fiction anyway, right?

Leaving aside the fact that a lot of so-called SJWs have our own tragic backstories to work out -- that's what he thought safety rules were about?

Making everything nice and pretty and palatable and not being able to play out haunted castles?

My first impulse was to mock. I like a good milkshake to the face, and I've said so in a bunch of different places. I don't hide from that.

But it genuinely did get me thinking. How did he come to this place?

Why was this guy in particular so afraid of having his haunted castles taken away?

Haunted castles aren't an epidemic. We don't have 10/100 women or 4/100 men experiencing haunted castles every year (ptsd.va.gov/understand/com…).

Unlike some other things, one American does not experience haunted castles every 73 seconds. (rainn.org/statistics/vic…)

And it's extremely unlikely that 3.6 million children experience haunted castles on a daily basis. (childhelp.org/child-abuse-st…)

These are just a couple of stand-ins for common triggers, but I started to see a pattern here.

Depictions of mental illness, child abuse, sexual assault, etc. were as real to this guy as depictions of haunted castles. They're just more set dressing.

To say "Hey, maybe we should focus on creating a space where we can explore heavy topics with care and consideration" to him might as well be "Since haunted castles are scary, we can't play with them."

Because haunted castles aren't real.

Look, even if you believe in ghosts and the Satanic Panic? It's HIGHLY unlikely any of your players have had firsthand experience with Satan or haunted castles or dead baby orgies that left them traumatized and confused and doing the long slow work of healing.

Now go back and look at the statistics for trauma, sexual violence, and child abuse. Read them again.

That's a LOT of people who have experienced one, some, or like me, all of the above. Even just in the US.

Does that mean you can't tell stories about these things?

Not even a little bit. Survivor testimony in any format is incredibly important in speaking truth to power. @BluebeardsBride , which was written by women with traumatic experience, is a great example of this.

@BluebeardsBride But here's the thing.

People at your table have experienced these things. Survivors KNOW when we're being exploited and sensationalized and made small for someone's entertainment.

If you want to use rape, mental illness, child abuse, etc. in your media? Make it carry weight.

@BluebeardsBride Rape is not an easy way of showing someone is evil or horny. Rape is a violation that leaves its mark upon the body and mind for years.

I have left so many games because the GM thought sexual assault was an acceptable throwaway line for "this person is evil".

Child abuse is not fat men in wife beaters who smell like piss pummeling their sweet innocent daughters in the face at random. It's a shaping attack. It is setting your children up to fail with impossible, often contradictory, standards so you can tear them apart.

You get my point. If you want to play out shit like this, you can't just say "and then your werewolf slips sideways into a node of the Wyrm and is held down and repeatedly raped by a nexus crawler" with a smile, as happened to one of my friends.

If you want to play out something like sexual assault or child abuse or mental illness, you have to be willing to commit.

And, if your fellow players don't want to, you need to be able to come to a consensus or find another table.

We'll come back to that last bit in my next tweet, but I want to add an addendum that may only be obvious to me.

If you continue to play out something that is very obviously distressing your fellow players in a way they don't enjoy, you are torturing them. Period. Stop it.

Going back to "find another table": this is what I think what causes hate-readers of Consent In Gaming or Advice For Considerate Play to scream about being kicked out of their own hobby by SJWs.

How familiar are y'all with the Geek Social Fallacies? plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.ht…

The first one: Ostracizers Are Evil.

The second: Friends Accept Me As I Am.

I'll let you read the rest of the doc and come to your own conclusions, but the TLDR is that NEITHER of these GSFs leave room for boundaries. At all.

In GSFland, saying no is the same as a personal judgment. Saying "I don't want to play with sexual assault in this particular campaign" means you are personally attacking your GM for even hypothetically considering it. You are limiting their creativity.

No more freeze peaches.

I got it. It clicked in my head. This specific outrage, this idea that haunted castles were in danger, all came from GSFland.

Saying that "hey, we should handle these topics with care and delicacy and play with people we trust or can build trust with" is a threat.

Because

1) If rape and mental illness aren't real in your brain, then
2) You equate them with haunted castles and dead baby orgies, which might be your brand of horror, then
3) If you run a horror game, you're at risk of being told no, which
4) Is a personal indictment.

Suddenly, people like @ShannaGermain and I become the tabletop cops (tablecops) because we have empowered people to make their own decisions and say "Actually, I'm not comfortable with this. Can we handle it a different way?"

Let this thread free you from your anxieties friends.

Someone saying no to you, something you want to run, or your GMing/playing style is not an indictment of you and everything you love.

Sometimes, it's just a no. And that's ok.

And you know what you're allowed to say no to?

Safety techniques and recommendations.

Personally, I don't feel safe playing in games where I am not empowered to say no, and where my GM and fellow players feel I am ruining the experience by saying no.

But that's just me. I'm not the tabletop cops. You do what's best for you.

In summary:

1. Real harm is real harm. Magic, haunted castles, blood orgies, etc. are not common IRL experiences. Rape, mental illness, child abuse, etc. are common IRL experiences. Don't treat them in the same way you treat haunted castles.

2. You are allowed to say no. To your GM and your fellow players. You are allowed to have boundaries and play with people who make you feel comfortable, and with whom you are building or have built trust. This does not make you a bad person.

3. You are also allowed to say yes! You are allowed to go dark and brutal, and I can't stop you -- nor do I really want to. I just ask you to carry with you the weight of going there, and know people will catch you*. I hope you are that person for your fellow players.

*When I say "catch", I mean "create a space where you know you can press stop or start at any time and you can modulate your experience based on your comfort level"

4. You don't have to use safety techniques that I, @ShannaGermain , or anyone else write.

But people are allowed to not want to game with you if you don't.

5. Treat gaming like any other human leisure activity. Gauge your comfort level and get a lifeguard or wear some floaties if you need to. It's ok!

Humans interacting with other humans always comes with some level of risk. Being open to exploration and mitigation is great.

6. Finally, just. Be nice to your friends, ok? I've heard so many stories of horror (or even just bog-standard hack/slash D&D-style) games being used as excuses to be cruel to one's friends (not the characters, the players) for fun.

That's bullshit. Don't do it.

Anyway, thanks for coming along on Mistress Bryk's Wild Ride. If you liked this thread, consider tossing me a coin (see my pinned post) or hiring me to write safety techniques for your game.

I work for .08/word.

Here is some recommended post thread reading.

Consent In Gaming: drivethrurpg.com/product/288535…
V5 (which includes Advice For Considerate Play): modiphius.net/products/vampi…
A GDoc template for RP negotiations: thespacebetweenstories.com/2020/01/30/a-t…
Playing Kindly: rufflejax.itch.io/playing-kindly