I would be more accepting of X-Card if they were modified to be less disruptive at the gaming table. In their current form they would play havoc at many tables imo.

As NDervish posted:

Quote from: nDervish;1060794This is my primary objection to X-cards.  Not that they're a way to unilaterally put the brakes on something that's headed into A Bad Place, but that, after you put the brakes on, I'm not allowed to ask what I would have to change to make things better for you, so that we can then determine whether we can work out a compromise that we're both happy with or if it would instead be best for us to not game together in the future.

They are too unilateral and the DM is not allowed to ask what is bothering the player. If they would only be allowed for truly despicable elements at the table like Rape, torture, and creepy behavior on the part of the DM and/or another player at the table. Not because player XYZ has a hard time detaching themselves from reality and thinks that killing imaginary animals is the same thing as real animals. Or that a person is told at session zero that the campaign will deal with freeing NPCs from slavers and  says nothing then begins to hold up a X-Card everytime slavery comes up in game.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1060830As a GM, I certainly talk about such things with the players.  But I'm not plunking an X-card down, because again it is insufficient.  If a player said they needed an X-card, I'm asking them what is the subject that they are worried about.  If it's trivial, then I'm not running a game for them.  If it's serious, then the X is not going to be in the game that I run for them, period--not even if they ask for it.  A game isn't a therapy session. I'm not a qualified therapist, and even if I were, I wouldn't run such a game.

Apparently the new Woke manifesto is that WE have to run a game for trivial matters at the table. WE will like it and if we do not we are terrible bad people. How dare we not be amateur therapists at the game table. How dare you expect the victim to take care of their own mental health issues.. ( Points accusatory wagging finger ) Your shaming the person!!.

I feel the same way. IF I can work with a person and they have issues with certain elements of the campaign if they are not trivial I will work with them. If not they can find another table. If I'm running a campaign that has elements of Salvery, told the player at session Zero and the majority of the group is good with it in the campaign. The player who is bothered either adapts to the campaign or looks elsewhere imo. Except for one douchebag who wanted to incorporate rape fantasies into his game. OR a few male gamers who were genuinely misogynistic maybe a handful over the years I have played. This so called rash of tables that are populated with rapist, misogynistic trolls is just that a myth perpetuated by the Regressive gamers.

Here's an example of better communication than the X-card.  We have an egg-timer sitting in the middle of the table.  Anyone can flip the timer.  This means that they believe that the game has ceased to be fun--usually because it has bogged down in too much OOC chatter, but could be anything really (too much "shopping", too much planning with insufficient information, etc.)  

The expected outcome is that within 3 minutes, the person(s) speaking will resolve the scene and move on.  Or, they will use the 3 minutes to explain, as players, what they are trying to accomplish.  Then either the rest of the group can now join in to accomplish that, or we wind up the scene.  

We use the timer because it doesn't bring everything to a halt immediately, and it is fairly unobtrusive.  I suppose in the correct circumstances, someone could use it similar to an X-card, if they were mildly freaked out by something that wasn't an immediate "stop" but they just wanted to end soon.  However, the people I play with are more overt about that kind of thing, and would just say it.

Quote from: sureshot;1060833If they would only be allowed for truly despicable elements at the table like Rape, torture, and creepy behavior on the part of the DM and/or another player at the table.

Who gets to decide what elements are "truly despicable"? I mean, people watch movies with rape and torture in them all the time -- some film franchises are literally based on torture as the central element, and the audience for them is plentiful. It sounds like you feel that torture is "despicable", but clearly others take it with a "meh".

Meanwhile, we have SJWs who think everything is "truly despicable".

The point being, defining which topics are appropriate for despising is itself an impossible, if not odious enterprise.

As for "creepy behavior" by actual players in real life at the table being addressed by holding up an "I'm offended" signal ... I don't even know where to begin addressing that one. Maybe women should carry X-cards around everywhere to avoid being raped or something, I dunno, but at the point we start discussing creepy behavior among real people then the arena being discussed  is Real Life, not game content.

Quote from: Motorskills;1060826Eh, I wasn't trying to pick a fight with "macho", happy to find another word if you can think of one.

What I was trying to get at is that many posters in this thread seem to think that distaste about the direction a game is taking is immediate and binary, and the options are either to walk away or suck it up.

I've certainly seen both of those, I've certainly done the latter myself (as described above). But absolutely those are not the only two options. Some posters in this thread seem to be arguing that any attempt to provide communication tools is some kind of left-wing conspiracy to shut down creativity.

I'm still bouncing off that hard. To my mind, having an extra tool to communicate to the DM or a fellow player(s) that something isn't having the intended effect just seems like a good thing to me.

As I DM, I want my players to know that they can communicate with me, and maybe that could include a subtle eye contact that draws my attention to the X-card. I adjust my language, tweak the scene, tell another player to back off a bit, whatever.

I do that all the time anyway, every good GM should be prepared to do that. Otherwise what's the point?

"Fuck you, I'm running this game for my enjoyment. If you enjoy yourself that's just a lucky side effect."

I know you're not picking a fight and I'm probably just being Mr. Poopy Diaper about it. I think you have nuggets of truth in your some of your posts and I think it's crappy for it to be potentially lost on "wrong-rubbing" words. If I look at things more objectively I must admit I find myself realizing that my pushback is often the same vitriol, only from a different angle, which is pretty pointless. Don't ever feel I want you to police your words, I think I was just hyper-critical(/sensitive?) due to some of our past interactions and different views. I do enjoy that I'm seeing some common ground when it comes to certain things.

As far as the general pushback against things like X-cards, I’m hoping you can see it’s largely a reaction to the hardcore control-crazies that says, “No more! Your taken inch is now a bloody mile!”. Do X-cards hurt me? No, as I don’t use them. Do they work? I dunno, but probably, at least for some. Are they a Left-wing tool of hatred? I seriously doubt it. Have there been rampant Left-created group attacks within our nerd hobby that are meant to control others in speech and actions? Absolutely. It’s this final bit I believe is attached to X-cards and why they’re immediately disliked.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1060830Well, the main problem with that is the idea that "more communication" is always a good thing.  Or at least the way most people mean it.  Technically, "communication" is not only a message, but a useful message that is sent and received.  So in the technical sense, more communication is a good thing.  However, what most people mean by communication is something more akin to "I got to express myself."  That can be good, but there is a limit.  One of the things missing, socially, from many people today is the ability to know when to shut up.  Not as in, "don't talk about this topic, ever, in polite society" (the opposite extreme) but rather, "OK, you've said your piece, but now you are just repeating yourself endlessly.  Give it a rest."

That's not "you" personally, but general, and there is no direct correlation to that example of shutting up and X-cards.  It's merely to illustrate the idea that "communication" isn't some automatic positive thing.  That doesn't mean that an X-card is necessarily bad from that line or argument, either--only that you can't say one way or the other from some general idea of valuing communication.

Onto a different slant on the X-card itself:  I think you are misreading the binary stuff.  Almost everyone has said things like, "talk about this stuff like adults," meaning that walk away or suck it up isn't the only option.  I'm walking away (generally) because of the odds.  But I'm an outlier, in that I don't particularly have the taste for many of the things that would even prompt an X-card in the first place.  Moreover, having had personal experience with people that have suffered real trauma, I think that in any case where an X-card is necessary, it is also grossly insufficient.  One of the reasons why I'd walk away from any game with an X-card, is that if someone picked it up, the game would immediately cease being fun for me. I'd go into "help this person retreat" mode until I could evaluate whether they were really in such bad shape that picking up the card was the only outlet.  That's probably not fair to them or the group, either, since the chances are remote that the card was picked up due to trauma, but rather just being pushed a little too far.  I can't help my response, because of past experiences with the real thing.  So I absent myself from the situation.  

As a GM, I certainly talk about such things with the players.  But I'm not plunking an X-card down, because again it is insufficient.  If a player said they needed an X-card, I'm asking them what is the subject that they are worried about.  If it's trivial, then I'm not running a game for them.  If it's serious, then the X is not going to be in the game that I run for them, period--not even if they ask for it.  A game isn't a therapy session. I'm not a qualified therapist, and even if I were, I wouldn't run such a game.

So much "Yes! That!" in there.

Your egg timer idea from the other post is really good.

Common sense and my sense of morals tells me that graphic descriptions of rape, torture and murder are despicable subjects. They have no place at the game table. I may says I stab a Goblin. Neither would I go deep into detail as to how I'm doing it.

Quote from: sureshot;1060815I was once told on another forum by a fellow player that one of his players cried because a random dog was killed in a module. All because his player liked dogs and she hated seeing even a imaginary one killed off by a imaginary npc. Only to be told not only was she allowed to do that non-stop at the table. we HAD to accept that players behavior no matter how disruptive. Anyone telling her to stop because it was disruptive he would consider a terrible person and a misogynist. All dure respect one is playing a rpg where one kills others other creatures for XP. Busting into tears every time a helpless imaginary animal is killed off in a game of D&D at my tables would get you the three strikes rule then ejected from our table. If the DM was going into graphic detail of the butchering of the dog then by all means raise the X-card because that kind of stuff is disturbing. Raising a X-Card at leas at my table because random animal noc was stabbed by a sword would be ignored by myself at least. So the example of being bothered by the hooting Owl may not be so far fetched after all.

If someone really can't deal with dogs being killed, okay... I can't remember the last time I had a dog die in a game I've run or played in.  Taking dog death out doesn't seem to be an issue, unless they try to game it by then using dogs for critical tasks (in which case they can basically fuck off).

I don't like dogs dying.  It bugs me.  It bugged me when I played Tomb Raider, and it bugged me when I watched John Wick.  I didn't break down in tears or anything, to be clear, and I wouldn't X-Card it in a game.  But if someone really hated it that much, it seems an easy thing to accommodate.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1060842As far as the general pushback against things like X-cards, I'm hoping you can see it's largely a reaction to the hardcore control-crazies that says, "No more! Your taken inch is now a bloody mile!". Do X-cards hurt me? No, as I don't use them. Do they work? I dunno, but probably, at least for some. Are they a Left-wing tool of hatred? I seriously doubt it. Have there been rampant Left-created group attacks within our nerd hobby that are meant to control others in speech and actions? Absolutely. It's this final bit I believe is attached to X-cards and why they're immediately disliked.

Yeah, it clearly seems to be a tribal thing.

Me, I'd have some level of suspicion, but would allow it.  And then if it was used as a way to dictate how the game ran I'd politely discuss things with the player, and then figure out if they're a good fit for the game or not.  Not every game is for every person.

I can zoom in and out of the graphic descriptions of combat, so that's why I blanket games with a rating. If you say NC-17 is your jam and I then describe the pink mist and bloody grey matter painting the wall after you shoot a guy in the head, but you get upset and angry, don't get angry. I am always willing to dial things up or down, but GMing on egg shells isn't fun.

Quote from: robiswrong;1060845I don't like dogs dying.  It bugs me.  It bugged me when I played Tomb Raider, and it bugged me when I watched John Wick.  I didn't break down in tears or anything, to be clear, and I wouldn't X-Card it in a game.  But if someone really hated it that much, it seems an easy thing to accommodate.

I don't like it either. When the person behavior is reasonable on that issue I will try to accommodate that player. Bursting into tears every time a imaginary animal is killed or the person no longer can function at the table is when I ask them to leave. Call me a jerk if you must I see the need for a reasonable amount of accommodation. I'm not going to bend over backwards or we would never game let alone finish one.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1060846I can zoom in and out of the graphic descriptions of combat, so that's why I blanket games with a rating. If you say NC-17 is your jam and I then describe the pink mist and bloody grey matter painting the wall after you shoot a guy in the head, but you get upset and angry, don't get angry. I am always willing to dial things up or down, but GMing on egg shells isn't fun.

Doing things the normal way which is to talk to players to gauge what they like/want at the game table is the way to go imo. To use your example if the player says he is good with the above then decides he is not I will tone it down. Yet don't agree to play in a campaign they will not enjoy either. Yes GMing on egg shells is not fun.

I don't think removing dog death was the problem it was the assertion that her feelings trumped the table's fun. Provided the table's fun isn't something awful, she might not need to play in that game. But that's the real issue, isn't it? What's defined as awful is subjective and nowadays, far too wide. Which leads to issues of what's acceptable socially and so on. It becomes this mental and emotional mine field that can be so stressful you might as well not play.

Quote from: sureshot;1060847Call me a jerk if you must...

Jerk.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1060848I don't think removing dog death was the problem it was the assertion that her feelings trumped the table's fun. Provided the table's fun isn't something awful, she might not need to play in that game. But that's the real issue, isn't it? What's defined as awful is subjective and nowadays, far too wide. Which leads to issues of what's acceptable socially and so on. It becomes this mental and emotional mine field that can be so stressful you might as well not play.

Well said and seconded.

With it being no longer the responsibility of the player to tell the person running the game what they are  and are not comfortable with. I'm also not a fan of everything and anything no matter how trivial being a issue. We are playing a game where characters and nocs die expecting only a slect few creatures to die is playing in the wrong game imo.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;1060849Jerk.

That's it you asked for it.

https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/DifficultHorribleDogfish

Quote from: sureshot;1060851That's it you asked for it.

https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/DifficultHorribleDogfish

https://www.google.com/search?q=x+card&client=safari&hl=en-us&prmd=sivn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj5jNWtupDeAhVCh1QKHYaoAiQQ_AUIEigC&biw=1024&bih=643#imgrc=w2s45hy8OLfehM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1060836Here's an example of better communication than the X-card.  We have an egg-timer sitting in the middle of the table.  Anyone can flip the timer.  This means that they believe that the game has ceased to be fun--usually because it has bogged down in too much OOC chatter, but could be anything really (too much "shopping", too much planning with insufficient information, etc.)  

The expected outcome is that within 3 minutes, the person(s) speaking will resolve the scene and move on.  Or, they will use the 3 minutes to explain, as players, what they are trying to accomplish.  Then either the rest of the group can now join in to accomplish that, or we wind up the scene.  

We use the timer because it doesn't bring everything to a halt immediately, and it is fairly unobtrusive.  I suppose in the correct circumstances, someone could use it similar to an X-card, if they were mildly freaked out by something that wasn't an immediate "stop" but they just wanted to end soon.  However, the people I play with are more overt about that kind of thing, and would just say it.

Firstly I really like the egg-timer thing, I think I might adopt some version of that.

Secondly having a communication tool doesn't mean there will be communication. After all, you should prefer that your egg timer never gets used, right?

If the egg timer keeps getting flipped, your game table is failing. Not necessarily terminally so, but the egg timer doesn't directly fix the root cause, it isn't intended to.
(That said, I'm happy to accept that it might - if the same guy keeps getting the egg timer flipped on him, hopefully he will start to learn to sharpen his play.)

I'd also dispute that the X-card doesn't mean that you can't talk like adults. In fact I would argue the reverse. "I am starting to have an issue, I'd like you to listen to me". I think it immediately focuses the conversation, gives a start point for an adult conversation, distinguishes it from a regular whine. Now the GM can decide that the player should suck it up or leave, the player may make that decision for himself.

I've thinking back at all the tables where there have been bad experiences (not necessarily my own) - the egg timer would have certainly some of mitigated those, some version of an X-card might well have mitigated others. In many cases, no system would have mitigated the issue which was fundamentally interpersonal.