Today I want to talk about comfort and safety at the table. It's an important subset of tools and a discussion of where our lines fall before play is vital. But personally I am really starting to feel like the way some games are written they want to treat me with kid gloves- like I am made of glass and they are afraid of shattering me?
When I ask if a player is comfortable, it is not in the way one does when they've tucked someone in on the couch with a warm cup of cocoa. I am asking the way a dentist does before they start drilling. We are going to be doing work and I want to make sure nothing is causing irritation that will prevent us from continuing on. Because even if you feel like you can handle that little jab in your side now- it's gonna be hell an hour from now. So let's make sure we are good to go!
As far as player safety tools go, I generally lean on the old standards of lines and veils as well as the x-card. The X-Card is just a mechanized way of saying no, you put an x in chat or put tap the card in the table. It's just a way of going stop, I don't like where we are going. This is nice because I've played with quite a few players who are too shy about things and might need a mechanic where they know they can say this and be listened to. However, I find its real strength is in just knowing it's there. You have a cord to pull on the parachute, a safety net beneath the high-wire. You might not need to always pull it but it gives peace of mind.
Lines and veils provide a more concrete roadmap for a game. Lines are things you just do not want present in the game, while a veil means you don't want to focus on such things. In my own games this means I never touch on sexual assault and I fade to black on scenes of torture.
I've been running a few campaigns with the same crew and we don't really touch on these anymore because we are all so familiar with each other and have built a culture of trust, which is great, but at new tables you really should take the time to hash these out. Also don't be fucking coy. If you are running a game and you have an idea for like an evil slaver culture the players will fight, bring that up so they can veto things they may not want to see. As a GM I want as clear a set of boundaries as possible so I can run wild inside that. I want to make my players feel emotion when they play, and not just the positive ones. I want them to fear, to feel disgust, to HATE. I want them to feel uncomfortable in ways they've expressed consent towards. I want to paint in contrasting shades and give depth to worlds and characters I portray- and it is entirely possible to do that while still respecting the guidelines you've all set up.
But I think an important thing to touch on here is that- they don't make these things simply not exist in the world. They are just not present in the story. I don't imagine a world that is free of pain and suffering- just that we don't need to show all of it. And this is one of my big issues with a lot of games I've seen where they prescribe how to engage with them. "If you are a hero in this world you can never x or y". This is a game where we don't show death or conflict, etc. Whenever I see rules like this, I feel restricted- like I'm having black removed from my palette. Because the thing is that the players, GM included, should be the ones making these choices. We should get to set our boundaries and then play within them.
Once a game starts telling me that something can't exist in its world then it begins to feel more and more false. You have removed dimension and now the cardboard nature of this world has come into focus. Sometimes, sure you can see why they might do this for certain properties.
The Avatar Legends game doesn't feature rules for death because it's a game based on a kid's show. One might argue it doesn't suit the tone. Except- hey I've also watched that show and people fucking die. Hell, main characters have killed people. So you can have a situation arise where a player might decide "I've reduced them to zero, I'm going to kill them", and the game want you to say no, that's not the game you are playing!
Another example is Wanderhome, a game I really love in so many aspects but one I have never been interested in playing. In its first pages it tells you this is a world with a fundamentally good, hospitable people and there is no violence here anymore. And once again I feel depth removed. I am not saying I want play some sort of bloodthirsty badger tearing through the Heath, but the idea of removing the possibility of play anathema. In the same way I'd lost interest in a game that tells me there is no romance. It's not that I necessarily wanted a character whose story was a grand romance or a path of bloody vengeance, but I immediately lose interest once I've had an avenue of expressing emotion locked off for a character.
My friends have known me to rail against "cozy" fiction and games, and while it's true I like my media to have teeth to them- that isn't my issue here. I think we should be meeting a game on its terms. They present us with a world to play in and frequently offer us roles to play. Be a hero, save the queen, break Lady Blackbird out of prison. A game can tell me that I am part of the drow revolution against their aelfir overlords. What it should not do is tell me how to play that. Hell, I can be given a pre-made character sheet at a convention table with a backstory and goal. I can still make all those things my own- because I choose my actions. I choose how I interact with this world and how my character feels about it. But as soon as a game is trying to tell you ways you cannot act or the proper way for a character to feel- then the failure is on its end. You have to meet the game on its own terms, but it also must meet the player on theirs. They have to let us play as we see fit.
