Do vegans murder nits so they don't get lice? 
Or do they let their body fauna flourish?  If so, that's a damn good reason to disinvite a player.

The fact that this thread exists is somewhat amazing, other sites would have shut this down and banned people for speaking the truth or having an opinion.

So I joined.  Thanks.

QuoteThis is a coping mechanism, not a solution.

I've noted in the past that much of the indie storygame community can be summed up as "You should be hyper-cautious of every player's tiniest neuroses, now here's a bunch of games about staggeringly damaged and dysfunctional people fucking"

There's not a lot of daylight between people who were severely sexually abused becoming hypersexual and engaging in self-destructive sex, and these people.  Probably because a mind-boggling number of indie designers are quite open about their own history of sex abuse.

What's even more disturbing to me is the rise of products that attempt to explicitly turn RPGs into therapy.  I can't think of much worse for a damaged, dysfunctional person than playing elfgames with other damaged, dysfunctional people to begin with; adding in the white-coat effect of the whole experience being a "therapeutic tool" is a crisis event waiting to happen.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on February 01, 2024, 02:32:09 AM

It's a retarted example. No one consents to hitting people over the head with a chair when playing D&D for any reason. The point of the X-Card is that everyone agrees to use it, and in the manner intended, can be used for abuse.

Everyone agreed to use chairs. They didn't agree to misuse chairs. Everyone can agree to use the X-card and still not welcome people to misuse it.

In fact, I am not aware of any game being played anywhere where the X-card has been used like some people seem to think it is, like some kind of red-light-green-light sub-game. If that ever happened, that game would be over pretty quickly. It's an oops button. It means, dump the warp core.

I'm not very comfortable with it for exactly that reason, but it's not malicious, and with a group of reasonable quality human beings, it would probably almost never get used. OTOH, I do wonder if, in all my years in gaming, someone wanted to say something and didn't have the words or the personal force, and if they had an X-card I would have found out something about how they are feeling that I didn't know. I would regret it if I re-traumatized someone.

I'm more of a lines-and-evils, or state the movie rating kind of person. But if someone stood up in the middle of a session and said, "I know we don't have an X-card, but after what Freddie Jo said, I can't continue to play unless we retcon this shit," I would take that seriously.

Quote from: pawsplay on February 02, 2024, 01:50:09 PM
Everyone agreed to use chairs. They didn't agree to misuse chairs. Everyone can agree to use the X-card and still not welcome people to misuse it.

You're still going with this retarded example...the X-card is nothing more than an emotional support iguana for alleged PTSD caused by someone's mom yelling at them for spilling paint on the floor when they were 5, and this trauma was just uncovered by a 3rd year psychology graduate student. You can insert any ridiculous animal you want instead of iguana, of course. The end result is if you ask this person to kindly leave their iguana at home when you game, they will throw a fucking fit and claim you're "gatekeeping" and some sort of bigot, and also don't take mental health seriously. It's nothing more than a physical manifestation of their horseshit self-diagnosis. These sorts of people are what we used to call "fucking weirdos" and yes, they were not allowed to game with us. It's funny how when I was a kid the nerds and jocks and popular kids and whoever else ALL HAD FRIENDS. Yes, the nerds' friends were fellow nerds, but they were friends nonetheless. Still, there was a group of fucking weirdos who no one liked, not even by extremely marginalized people on the fringes of society. When I was in junior high, our lunch gaming group was mostly nerds, one football player who liked D&D, and an actual retarded kid named Chris who was self-aware and cool. Oh, and a degenerate who went to juvie and alternative school on and off because he had no compunction about beating the fuck out of anyone who he didn't like, nor robbing convenience stores. He talked about prison sometimes and how his uncle (an ex-con) described how the pecking order worked, just in case he needed the info.

Yes, personal anecdote. Guess the fuck what? Our motley band refused to associate with the smelly kid who wore the same Slayer shirt every day and who couldn't say hi without going into a diatribe about some fucked up nonsense like eating babies. I don't even remember the sort of crap this kid spewed, but it wasn't even jokes, it was just disturbing. He had no friends because he was just a socially inept outcast. Yes, it was sad. No, we didn't care because we were 12. I am sure that kid would be using an X-card in every game he played because he was a FUCKING WEIRDO. He would put his emotional support pangolin right in the middle of the table while complaining about someone else eating cheese puffs because he is allergic to the dye used and by God you best not ignore THIS use of the X-card! How dare you talk about the merchant's mother! Not everyone has a mother!

I don't even know where I was going with his other than only fucking weirdos need X-cards, and they're the ones who will abuse them every time.

Quote from: yosemitemike on February 02, 2024, 10:53:26 AM

Quote from: Abraxus on February 02, 2024, 08:22:57 AM
Not to mention as I said previously the creator the card is aware of the main flaw and is stupidly stubbornly against fixing it let alone even addressing it.

This is the main reason why I suspect that what I would call abuse of trigger warnings or the X-card is actually these things working as intended.  This is actually what these things are designed to do.

The more I learn about it, the more I agree with your suspicion.

Quote from: pawsplay on January 28, 2024, 06:05:33 PM
I tend to think of role-playing as an inherently "dangerous" activity in the sense that it involves inter-personal interaction, violence, various historical contexts, and so forth. Often the format allows people to act in ways that would be unacceptable in real life. That said, I think it's thoughtful and helpful to give people a heads up if you are going to be introducing some potentially thorny issues. It's pretty easy to guess what might be triggering to a lot of people. Other times, it's not as obvious, and you will have to navigate with the fallout as best you can.

In the US, just saying PG-13 or something like that does set some pretty good overall expectations.

Could it be due to the circles you travel in? You know the "tolerant, progressive and inclusive people"?

IME the people asking for trigger warnings, X cards, etc are the only ones likely to be the type of pest that might make the imberciles playing with them feel like the "safety" tools are needed.

That and the inherent amount of mental illness among leftard circles.

Edited to add:

To Cipher and SilverBlade, I have 3+ years playing online EVERY Saturday, one of our players is clearly left leaning but we all manage to leave personal politics off the virtual table.

If you're capable of doing so and are interested I can ask the DM to invite you, the campaign is about to end but you could still play a few months with us and see if you like it.

Quote from: Brad on February 02, 2024, 02:26:02 PM
I don't even know where I was going with his other than only fucking weirdos need X-cards, and they're the ones who will abuse them every time.

It's the manifestation of the fetishization of mental illness. Mostly, I suspect, self-diagnosed (IE bullshit) or endorsed by a "mental health professional" who also goes along with that bullshit.

Quote from: pawsplay on January 28, 2024, 06:05:33 PM
I tend to think of role-playing as an inherently "dangerous" activity in the sense that it involves inter-personal interaction, violence, various historical contexts, and so forth. Often the format allows people to act in ways that would be unacceptable in real life. That said, I think it's thoughtful and helpful to give people a heads up if you are going to be introducing some potentially thorny issues. It's pretty easy to guess what might be triggering to a lot of people. Other times, it's not as obvious, and you will have to navigate with the fallout as best you can.

In the US, just saying PG-13 or something like that does set some pretty good overall expectations.

I need a better knowledge of how you define "dangerous."
This logic seems adjacent to the sort that results in things like "videogames cause violence" at a glance.

Quote from: WERDNA on February 02, 2024, 07:36:58 PM

Quote from: pawsplay on January 28, 2024, 06:05:33 PM
I tend to think of role-playing as an inherently "dangerous" activity in the sense that it involves inter-personal interaction, violence, various historical contexts, and so forth. Often the format allows people to act in ways that would be unacceptable in real life. That said, I think it's thoughtful and helpful to give people a heads up if you are going to be introducing some potentially thorny issues. It's pretty easy to guess what might be triggering to a lot of people. Other times, it's not as obvious, and you will have to navigate with the fallout as best you can.

In the US, just saying PG-13 or something like that does set some pretty good overall expectations.

I need a better knowledge of how you define "dangerous."
This logic seems adjacent to the sort that results in things like "videogames cause violence" at a glance.

Brought to you by the people who think words are violence, and silence is also violence.

Quote from: WERDNA on February 02, 2024, 07:36:58 PM

Quote from: pawsplay on January 28, 2024, 06:05:33 PM
I tend to think of role-playing as an inherently "dangerous" activity in the sense that it involves inter-personal interaction, violence, various historical contexts, and so forth. Often the format allows people to act in ways that would be unacceptable in real life. That said, I think it's thoughtful and helpful to give people a heads up if you are going to be introducing some potentially thorny issues. It's pretty easy to guess what might be triggering to a lot of people. Other times, it's not as obvious, and you will have to navigate with the fallout as best you can.

In the US, just saying PG-13 or something like that does set some pretty good overall expectations.

I need a better knowledge of how you define "dangerous."

Try reading the part that starts with "in that sense that..."

Quote
This logic seems adjacent to the sort that results in things like "videogames cause violence" at a glance.

Can you elaborate on your thesis? I'm not sure I follow this so-called "logic."

Quote from: pawsplay on January 31, 2024, 02:30:32 PM

Quote from: yosemitemike on January 29, 2024, 09:16:12 AM
The difference is that the X-card is an unquestionable veto that can be invoked at any time for any reason with no need for justification or explanation and no questioning or discussion allowed.  It's so easy to abuse that part of me suspects that it was designed to be abused.  You would have to be a fool to not anticipate that such an easy to abuse tool will be abused.  If something can be abused, it will be and these tools are very, very easy to abuse.

A chair can be abused. Someone could decide, in the middle of a session, that they don't like what's happening in the game, become triggered, and pick up their chair and hit you with it.

If someone is abusing the X-card, or their needs are such that they simply can't be reasonably accommodated in the planned game, wouldn't you just un-invite them?

Do you need an X-X-card, to play when someone's use of the X-card is affecting your experience?

  Somebody at a game table hits me with a chair they are ambulance bound very shortly thereafter.   What sort of people do you play with where this enters your mind as a point to make an example with? 

   Regarding X cards and such...I would never sit at a table where they made an appearance.   I play mostly with family and friends.  If I sat down and got any sort of speech about X cards/trigger warnings I would wonder 2 things...am I about to be in a game with a Gm and players who are going to get into their grotesque kinks at the table, or am I at a table with people too weak to talk about hitting things with an axe.  Either way I am out.

Quote from: pawsplay on February 02, 2024, 09:21:43 PM

Try reading the part that starts with "in that sense that..."

Can you elaborate on your thesis? I'm not sure I follow this so-called "logic."

I asked you to elaborate for a reason. In what "sense" is it dangerous to deal in fictional violence, take inspiration from history, engage in human interaction, etc ?

It's not a thesis. It's an observation that what you're saying sounded similar to the manner of things that come out of the mouths of politicians when they blame violent crimes on whatever video games with violence are in vogue. What does it matter if a party acts like bandits or if someone plays Grand Theft Auto?

Quote from: WERDNA on February 02, 2024, 09:38:19 PM

I asked you to elaborate for a reason. In what "sense" is it dangerous to deal in fictional violence, take inspiration from history, engage in human interaction, etc ?

"In the sense that it involves inter-personal interaction, violence, various historical contexts, and so forth." That is the sense of "dangerous" I was using. I stated the parameters which make it "dangerous" and I am not relying on other definitions.

Quote
It's not a thesis. It's an observation that what you're saying sounded similar to the manner of things that come out of the mouths of politicians when they blame violent crimes on whatever video games with violence are in vogue. What does it matter if a party acts like bandits or if someone plays Grand Theft Auto?

What the fuck are you talking about? I don't care if you play Grand Theft Auto 8: Skull-fuck Your Granny.