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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3705 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 12, 2023

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Is anyone familiar with the history of the TTRPG safety toolkit? http://bit.ly/ttrpgsafetytoolkit / https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/114jRmhzBpdqkAlhmveis0nmW73qkAZCj

I only learned about it yesterday and I'm afraid to think what kind of taboo content people that have created this include in their sessions.

I haven't done much TTRPG playing, but my youngest brother has a regular session and has DM'd frequently, and he's shared some stories/gripes over the years. Mostly, it's just been players thinking they're funnier than they really are, and doing stupid things for the lulz, or refusing to let go of a stupid running gag (the Shadowrun campaign derailed by crotch itch).

But to the extent there's been fairly blatant "magical realm" behavior in his group — and it's been thankfully few, but multiple, occasions — it's consistently taken the form of "I'm going to send my female character alone, under-armed, into that cave with the band of male goblins/orcs. Gee, I sure hope nothing bad happens to her…" And when called on it, the players in question have offered the same defense each time: how dare you accuse her of that sort of behavior, when that's something only guys do.

Yes, in my brother's experience, every time it's been a female player [edit: seeing how this is ambiguously phrased, I mean it wasn't always the same female player in each incident] engaging in this manner, and every time she insists that, as a girl, her actions are always pure, and that no matter that she consistently plays her character like Darkness from KonoSuba, any hint of sexual connotation is all just in your dirty male head, then spends the rest of the session in a pout because the group wouldn't play along with her fantasy while also providing the plausible deniability that it's not her fantasy, it's only just because of those sexist male players that her character was overpowered… and violated… and… [heavy breathing]…

because the group wouldn't play along with her fantasy while also providing the plausible deniability that it's not her fantasy

And now you know why FATAL exists: for when you need a TTRPG framework that's so full of kinky bullshit that it's going to happen even if you aren't actively steering your character towards it.

Someone gotta tell that woman about online erotic roleplay.

that woman

I see how my phrasing was unclear. We're talking more than one female player here, across different incidents.

https://old.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/top/

I've never had to do a Session 0 with my groups because I've played with people smart enough to know that raping another player character is a terrible idea, but some tables have people with a charisma score of -3.

It drives me nuts that tabletop gaming has largely become the refuge of soyfacing idiots who demand everything be sanitized and cleaned for them.

There's not much of a TTRPG scene in India, but if I have the misfortune to run into the types who demand the kind of accomodations you've linked to, I'm either kicking them out or leaving the session.

Bloody hell, one of the documents in the tools and resources folders suggests that horror have a specific content warning.

On an unrelated note, what is your opinion on the BDSM scene?

I find it mildly confusing* and don't particularly see the appeal, but once again, to each their own.

*In a colloquial sense, I understand the potential evo-psych arguments for why men prefer to be dominant and women submissive in such regards, and the reverse is likely a benign misfiring.

I'm not inclined to punish them, and besides, what's the point? They might enjoy it if you spank them ;)

As far as I'm aware the autistic focus on boundaries and talking them over first thing is similar in BDSM and modern TTRPG.

It's a lot more reasonable to demand clear boundaries and communication in BDSM. You're combining acts that can cause strong negative feelings, physical restraints or intentionally caused pain that can cause permanent damage if you do it wrong, with roleplay where you intentionally ignore the usual ways of judging if something's gone wrong (ignoring physical resistance and asking to stop, enjoying pain, ...).

Whereas in a TTRPG it's literally just words.

Gosh, I can think of a few. Especially with Internet strangers, that can go from tactless to creepy real fast.

There's some Weird Stuff in fairly well-respected mainline TTRPGs. I've got the Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Exalted textual examples (aka "fuck this wolf or the earth will die"), but they're honestly pretty tame compared to what people came up with for Black Spiral Dancers, Malfeas, or the Neverborn to do, since they're all basically different flavors of corruptively invading your very soul. Unknown Armies was better-known for its magical bum fights, but one of its more serious mechanical advances was a system for measuring and applying how traumatized your character had become, and while some GMs were just got in the oceans-of-blood wackiness, there was a lot of space for really subtle attacks that could be really innovative and/or strike to the bone.

That said, the toolkit's not really meant for that purpose, as evidenced by the fairly conventional material in the topic checklist, so it's not a huge surprise a lot of the motivating incidents were less 'extreme' or 'taboo' and more the conventional array of cringe. The Far Verona scandal lines up with the release of that specific safety toolkit (though is almost certainly not the sole motivation), and it's less kinky than the classical Pissard's 'magical forest'; it's simply not something most players signed up for. X-cards were something people brought up in response to the 2019 UK Games Expo snafu (which is a little worse than the mainstream media coverage: the game was Tales from the Flood, and this means probably-mid-teens characters), and I'd heard about the cards back as early as 2015.

There's probably some acceleration due to the BlackhattMatt scandal from White Wolf and to a lesser extent Zak S, both early 2019, but that's more political realignment in general rather than their behaviors specifically.

That said, the toolkit's not really meant for that purpose, as evidenced by the fairly conventional material in the topic checklist, so it's not a huge surprise a lot of the motivating incidents were less 'extreme' or 'taboo' and more the conventional array of cringe.

I was completely puzzled by the vibes of the conversation this link pointed to until I realized it was RPG.net and not RPGcodex.net.

And thanks for the detailed reply.

Sorry if this is off-topic, but could I ask for a little courtesy with regards to Google Docs/Drive (and other sites that will automatically use an existing account)? Clicking on a shortened/obscured link and immediately seeing it going to Google and being opened on a personal, non-pseudonymous Google account was a bad surprise. I don't think right now Drive owners can see who has their drive opened on publically shared documents but that's the kind of thing that could change anytime from Google

Just asking to either not shorten/obscure Google Drive/Docs link, or to add a warning so people who don't want to risk associating real-names with pseudonyms know to open in Private Mode.

Sure, I just copied it from the rulebook I was reading and didn't think twice. I myself find it quite annoying when a link to a pornographic game walkthrough takes me to Google Docs.

I myself find it quite annoying when a link to a pornographic game walkthrough takes me to Google Docs.

Oh yeah, that is the worse! O... Or so I hear, of course it has never happened to me since I would never open such a document.

I'm afraid to think what kind of taboo content people that have created this include in their sessions.

I cannot speak to the history of it and I'm sure these are used in some campaigns that explore more extreme stuff, but the tables I've heard of where these are used are on the opposite end.

That is to say, they have these cards in case a player is uncomfortable with situations that are pretty bog-standard for fantasy settings (fantasy racism, religion being portrayed either positively or negatively, sexism, classism, etc)

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