Quote from: Cipher on January 28, 2024, 11:58:25 PM
Interesting. I would say that I am someone that has no trigger warnings. There's stuff that I like and stuff that I don't like but I wouldn't say anything "triggers" me in a game of make believe.

I don't like playing edgy games or being villains or even quote unquote "heroic" murder hobos. But, I do agree that if the idea of the game is playing amoral pirates out for gold and mischief, then I know from the get go what type of stuff its going to happen and if that game is or isn't for me. But, I have played Shadowrun and Cyberpunk games that were serious without being edgy and I really enjoyed them!

I agree with you on the "knife-ear" stuff, but I remember a discussion in the old WotC forums back when they announced what was then called "D&D Next", and someone was saying that calling dwarves "noseys" or "big noses" was a racial slur against jewish people, and someone mentioned calling drow "darkies" also being considered a racial slur, the same with "greenskins" for Orcs and Goblins, although that's more of a Warhammer fantasy thing.

In that case, do you agree? If not, then where do you draw the line? Meaning, what makes refer to elves in a derogatory manner due to the shape of their ears more acceptable than doing the same for dwarves and their noses?

I'd say I don't have any trigger warnings too, but that said there's some stuff I don't bring up in games just because it's not really something that needs to be brought up. If someone else did I wouldn't have a problem, but as a referee I don't. Take sex for example: if a PC in one of my games goes to bed, I don't describe the whole process, I just tell them they did their biological duty, and have them roll 1d10 to see how well they did.

And I should clarify that I think you can play games like Cyberpunk 2020 without being super-edgy, rather that like you said with the pirate game it sort of implies certain topics. For example I wouldn't go into graphic detail about drug use and ODing in Cyberpunk, explaining all the ins and outs of drug abuse. Rather that coming into a game like that, you should expect drug use to be baked in the cake even if it's just mentioned.

On the knife ear/nosey topic I'll say that I don't think name calling is really an issue, unless the person is going out of their way to use actual real-life slurs. The nosey name is just that, and I think that just like with orcs if anyone sees anything more than a dwarf they're the one with the issues. That goes both ways: to the SJW and to the actual racist, it's just a game don't make it out to be more than that. Me picking on the party dwarf isn't going to influence my life and views outside of the game, and I'd wager most people are the same way.

And again, I don't go out of my way to detail the various racial tensions, or keep lists of nicknames they have for each other. I just make a note of it, occasionally bring it up when relevant and leave it at that. There's no need to try and tie in real racial conflicts and graft them into the game.

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.

That's a really good point too. You can be considerate for someone in your game group. It doesn't require giving anyone and everyone you play with an abusable veto-card to control the game. And as Pundit has mentioned before in one of his videos, a player can always just leave the game.

Quote from: Cipher on January 29, 2024, 12:21:27 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on January 28, 2024, 11:12:37 PM
Movies have ratings with warnings about the kinds of content within.

I think that a lot of the players you find in conventions have needlessly thin skins and that this phrase "trigger warning" is probably bad terminology, and the X-Card is now used to ruin everyone's immersion more than help anyone get out of permanent brain damage. But do not confuse the smoothbrain implementation with the idea itself being bad. The idea itself is good and helpful, especially if you keep the entire table on topic on what kind of story they are telling.

I used to agree with this take before this experience, but after that I am unsure on what would be a good implementation specially what you meant about: "if you keep the entire table on topic on what kind of story they are telling."


What I mean by this is that, it seems everyone understood the trigger warnings except me. I thought we were all on the same page after the Session 0 discussion. We are going to play heroes, that is the 'Good Guys', no sexual stuff nor racism, bullying or bigotry.

Then, it turns out that calling a vampire that had captured innocents and kept some in a dungeon on his estate a "filthy bloodsucker" and preparing to attack him on sight was somehow breaking that trigger warning and then I got that "X card" as you put it.

My concern about trigger warnings now is, where do you draw the line? It is apparent to me now that we had different definitions of what is and what isn't bigotry. How long should the "trigger warning" discussion be? Can it really cover every single aspect of play?

As someone that has no trigger warnings, this is somewhat confusing to me. I understand the idea of people not wanting certain stuff in the game but I don't really understand the idea of getting "triggered" by it. I really, really dislike when dogs, specifically dogs, are killed in movies, specially in graphical fashion.

However, that doesn't trigger me. I don't look away. I don't have nightmares about this at night. I just really love dogs and don't want to see them getting hurt. Is this what they call "privilege"? The fact that nothing really triggers me, is that because I have led what they called a "privileged life"?

I don't think so, but a lot of folks are commenting that they do like content warnings so perhaps I am the odd man here that does not get triggered by anything.

And that's not me saying that I don't dislike stuff when I am playing a roleplaying game. I don't really care for sexual stuff or romance, but I won't get trigger if players flirt with NPCs, if they bang prostitutes in a whore house, if they flirt/bang with each other's characters or if I am in a game and the GM narrates dogs getting brutally killed or even sexual abuse.

I just tune that out. It's make believe. I know it can't hurt me and I don't have to imagine it if I don't want to. When I am the one running games, if someone would ask me to skip a description or getting into too much detail about a certain situation or just to "fade to black" and move along what happens next, I would comply to be friendly even though I wouldn't ask them to do so if they were the ones running the game.

I don't think that's because I am "privileged" but perhaps that's what they mean when they say it?

Again, I think the problem there was smoothbrain implementation, because anyone who is triggered by calling a vampire a "bloodsucker" was destined to get triggered just by having a vampire antagonist in the campaign. This strikes me as a potentially bad faith use of safety tools, because it looks like the intent was to smack you around with it rather than make the table safer.

All I can say is what I tend to do with my campaigns. I have a Whitelist (content I need to have to make the campaign work) and then use a derivative of the Monte Cook Games Consent in Gaming questionnaire to determine if other stuff can be included without concern, included with metagame approval of the GM and any affected players (PC-PC romance typically falls here), or flat out banned. Yes, that's a questionable source, but it's useful.

Typically, I replace X-Cards with a Parlaimentary Vote to change something about the campaign. This does allow for emergency stop conditions for the rare cases when a player irresponsibly forgets their triggers when first joining the campaign, but because the majority vote of the table manually overrides the safety concern the table chemistry is shifted away from outrage and towards consensus. It also comes with a built in campaign health tracker, because if I as the GM ever lose a vote against the players...the campaign is probably toast.

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.

I've never done it myself because I don't play any more, but I've often wondered what would happen at one of these tables if a player simply tapped the X-Card every time any form of homosexuality was hinted at.

I'm kidding, of course, he'd be thrown out in a heartbeat but it would demonstrate how hypocritical the whole bollocks is.

For extra points, fight back tears while talking about the "friendly uncle" that molested you as a child and that's why you can't handle the topic.  Watch them twist trying to decide who the bad guy is.

I've been playing for over 30 years. Where have these people who piss their pants at fictional spiders or water been for the first 25 years of it? Certainly not fucking playing at any table I've been at.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 29, 2024, 08:23:25 AM

Quote from: Llew ap Hywel on January 29, 2024, 08:05:25 AMYou try and x-card my game mid session though and you can take your idiot ass to play my little pony.

I was thinking about the difference between playing the X-card and simply raising a hand to say "whoa, hang on, can we talk about this a second?" to a GM, and suddenly it struck me:

The thing with the X-card is that it is designed to give the complainer formal authority. Like Robert's Rules of Order, it's an attempt to formally bind the group to an agreement that obliges them to recognize a complaint and act to alleviate it; it's about putting power in the hands of the complainer rather than in the hands of the group, and whenever power is formally allocated to an individual over a group, the tendency is for individuals to come along who will start abusing that power. What starts as a way for rare players with genuine trauma to express objections without having to defend or justify themselves is always exploited by people simply looking for leverage over how to run a group.

Having accumulated enough observational data by now to know that trigger warnings don't in fact help people endure disturbing content any more than coming upon it "cold" would -- that they really only work as help deciding whether to engage at all, a choice which isn't always practical -- the notion of "enforcing" them only rings like another example of the same process.

I was in a game back in the mid 90s that was going heavy handed with the whole grimdark derp derp thing that was popular at the time.  I wasn't enjoying it.  In the last session of that particular campaign I was in, the GM was going into graphic detail about a murder scene the party discovered.

I just told the table the game wasn't to my taste and excused myself.  Later, I talked to two of the players because they were worried about the status of our relationship.  I let them know that I'm not really into the sex and gore the game was.  We parted on good terms and I even played other games with some of those guys latter.

The difference is, I understood that I, the player, could only determine my own behavior.  I did not use my personal take on the material as an excuse for telling other people how to behave.  Even now, I reserve the right as both a player and a GM that I can withdraw from a game that takes on something I don't want to deal with.  (Of course, as a GM, that means the game ends but I don't just end a game without talking it out.)

Quote from: pawsplay on January 29, 2024, 03:23:43 AM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 29, 2024, 03:20:47 AM

Quote from: Cipher on January 28, 2024, 05:32:23 PM
Greetings!

What are your thoughts on trigger warnings?

They are a way for abusive people to manipulate others.

I can't say I've ever been abused by a trigger warning.

That's because you buy into the woke bullshit they're spewing, so it doesn't affect you. YOU are part of the problem.
This is why I believe most of the woke suffer from mental disorders.

To the OP: you were right in getting out of that insanity. Plead your case any more and they would start yelling "Shame! SHAME!!!"
(which is ironic, because it's was the bad guys in GoT who who shouted that...but i digress...)
Hey I'm always looking for players. I'll PM you if you're interested in getting into a campaign that is 100% the opposite of woke garbage. We just started a few month ago, so you can jump in rather easy.

Quote from: pawsplay on January 29, 2024, 03:23:43 AM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 29, 2024, 03:20:47 AM
They are a way for abusive people to manipulate others.

I can't say I've ever been abused by a trigger warning.

That's not what he said.  You're being disingenuous as usual.

I'm a bit surprised no one has mentioned the M-Card (https://postmortemstudios.wordpress.com/2018/06/26/rpg-m-card-roleplaying-outside-safe-spaces/) yet.

Quote from: Llew ap Hywel on January 29, 2024, 08:05:25 AM
You try and x-card my game mid session though and you can take your idiot ass to play my little pony.

My MLP games have fillynapper pony-trafficing gansters, unethical experiments on live ponies, racist griffons planning genocides, and soulsucking nightmare demons from the moon. I don't want those people either.

Quote from: Grognard GM on January 29, 2024, 10:24:23 AM
I've been playing for over 30 years. Where have these people who piss their pants at fictional spiders or water been for the first 25 years of it? Certainly not fucking playing at any table I've been at.

I might have worded it strongly with "panic" but his discomfort was visible and you could tell he was immediately yanked out of the game when a spider-like creature appeared. And he is one of the last people in the group you would expect to have that kind of phobia. The guy with the drowning fear might have pre-reacted to it and may not even have problem if it happened ingame. But my player had trauma from a bomb exploding in her vicinity, and thats a shit you'll never experience unless you live in a third world country, something the safety tool grifters would never do. (She is doing better if anyone asks)

GM at the start of a game:  OK, you set out into the wilderness.  It's going to be about a 3-day journey to the Dungeons of Doom, so...

Player 1:  NO!  *taps X card*  I'm agoraphobic!  *Starts shaking; tears well up*  Don't mention the outdoors!

GM:  OK, sorry.  We'll just say you're at the dungeon already.  The entrance is narrow, and steep steps lead down into pitch black darkness.  You can...

Player 2:  NOOOO!  I'm claustrophobic.  I'm not going in there.  I'll wait outside.

GM:  Alright, you can wait outside under the trees.  Meanwhile -

Player 3:  "TREES?  You didn't say anything about trees being in this game!  I'm dendrophobic.  No trees!"

GM:  *sigh*  Fine.  You're on the open steppe then, and -

Player 1:  You mean there's nothing but open sky above us?  Well that doesn't help me!  I'm agoraphobic, remember!

GM:  OK, let me rethink this.... Right then, you're all aboard ship, sailing for the, uh, Place of Doom.  You claustrophobes can stay on deck, and you agoraphobes can stay below deck.  There's no trees anywhere in sight."

Player 4:  *pounds X card furiously*  I'm thalassophobic!  I'm not gonna play unless you swear not to mention large bodies of water!"

GM:  You know, maybe I should just scrap this adventure and we'll play something else.  I have this one I found on the internet, set in a sort of a fantasy Starbuck's called "No Tears Over Spilled Coffee."  How does that sound"

Quote from: daniel_ream on January 29, 2024, 11:28:09 AM
I'm a bit surprised no one has mentioned the M-Card (https://postmortemstudios.wordpress.com/2018/06/26/rpg-m-card-roleplaying-outside-safe-spaces/) yet.

That's brilliant. The analogies are apt as well.

Quote from: daniel_ream on January 29, 2024, 11:25:45 AM

Quote from: pawsplay on January 29, 2024, 03:23:43 AM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on January 29, 2024, 03:20:47 AM
They are a way for abusive people to manipulate others.

I can't say I've ever been abused by a trigger warning.

That's not what he said.  You're being disingenuous as usual.

OF course he's being disingenuous. If all manipulation doesn't equate to abuse, it doesn't fit the woke narrative.
But those of us who are intelligent and sane know this.

Quote from: daniel_ream on January 29, 2024, 09:55:16 AM
I've never done it myself because I don't play any more, but I've often wondered what would happen at one of these tables if a player simply tapped the X-Card every time any form of homosexuality was hinted at.

I'm kidding, of course, he'd be thrown out in a heartbeat but it would demonstrate how hypocritical the whole bollocks is.

No joking: I would be willing to be thrown out of a group using the X- Card in such a way.  And, I would ask that the players respect my religious beliefs.

Trigger warnings seem like a great marketing gimmick to make your game seem edgy and cool.  Just like the Parental Avisory stickers on heavy metal and rap albums in the '80's.