Has anyone had any experience with more “run-time” consent management tools for RPGs?
I mean stuff like the X-Card or Script Change
I can see the merit in this list. If I was to use something like this I would make a few changes though.
First of all, I would make the list about “Things I’d like to see in the story.” and give it a rating from 1 to 5. 1 being “Do not want to see”, 3 being “don’t mind either way” and 5 being “love to see”. This would feel a bit less formal then giving consent, but amounts to the same. Also it could give a surprising insight in what your players want to see.
Secondly I would probably expand it a bit. As 8-p said this list is at once weirdly specific in places and vague in others. I also like Jandrese’s suggestion to ask how players feel about splitting up the party.
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Of course if scary things bother someone, they should just not play if they are running that sort of campaign.
My reply was tongue in cheek that someone would use your fears against you (which is the concept of so many horror movies) - but I wasn’t approaching it from a serious angle where people filled out a form and marked it as “red line” and they did it anyway,
Fuck yes! This is great to have as a tool in the gamer’s arsenal (both for players and GMs)!
I’ve been a gamer for many years and am not at all easily offended, but I actually left a game table mid-session and refused to go back when the GM repeatedly included rape into the storylines (and not just the “bad” guys either, supposedly “neutral” NPCs we were expected to interact with).
The first time it happened, I talked to him afterwards and told him I’d prefer that he didn’t include sexual assault themes in the game, as it upset me, and it wasn’t at all necessary for the storyline. He apologized and said he didn’t realize it would be an issue, and said it wouldn’t come up again.
I believe his apology was sincere, but the next session, his creative storytelling streak turned dark and my character had to witness a woman being raped. When he asked what I was doing, I said my character leaves, and I made some excuse to leave the table and never came back.
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Yeah that was the common thread I saw in that “worst gaming session” thread.
I honestly can not think of a time rape was actually included in a gaming session. Going to brothels, yes. Maybe a barbarian talking about “rape and pillage”? But I don’t think I’ve ever had the act actually committed in game involving either NPCs or Players. I guess I am just lucky?
I’ve gamed for many years, and that’s the only time it’s ever come up. Later, the GM said he got carried away by including a protagonist in a book series he was reading. I hadn’t heard of it, so read a summary, and turns out the dude is an anti-hero who rapes women (including his sister).
Ummmm, thanks dude, but if you’re behind the screen, I’m not at the table…
After I told my husband why I wasn’t gaming and the multiple conversations I had with the GM, he said “Dude, when he asked me for GM advice, I specifically told him not to include possibly traumatizing topics like sexual assault!”
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And just a reminder as to why such guides are needed, 26% of the book’s reviews are 1-star ratings, you can’t leave a new rating, and the discussions tab only shows “Discussion thread has been removed due to an influx of unrelated and non-productive commentary for prospective customers.”
sigh… Even if you’re a “no holds barred” GM who doesn’t want to be constrained, this is still useful, as it informs the players ahead of time and lets them decide if they want to stay or find a different gaming group.
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Wow! Sounds like the jack ass did it to either specifically mess with you or because he wanted you gone. What a shitty GM! I’m sorry you had to go through that.
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I actually don’t think it was intentional - I joke that he has no internal firewall, so any idea that pops into his head is executed. He was new to running a game, so I think was trying to think of shortcuts to drama, and honestly didn’t realize it would be a problem. When it came to the second incident, I’m sure he had totally forgotten about our conversation and just headed into the scene created in his head.
I think he would have set my request in to prevent a third time, but I wasn’t willing to chance it. I play games to have fun and get away from my troubles, not to be confronted by them.
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You are pretty kind to the GM… but you also know him. Seems to me that hearing it from both you and your husband would have clued him in, but some people are just that resistant, I guess.
Word.
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Yea, it’s really sad to see so much resistance, but I am assuming 99% of them haven’t even read the book.
A guide to consent in gaming isn’t meant to be a tool for sanitizing or censoring game sessions, just a way to have a conversation about concepts before the first die is cast. It’s even useful for GMs to notify the players of what topics may come up, and if not acceptable to a player, they can suggest it may be better to find a different gaming group better suited to their needs.
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I’ve unfortunately had it come up a few times.
Once I was playing captain of a pirate ship, mind you in a setting where it’s common for women to be sailors, and a couple other players wanted to assault some captives.
It would not have been graphic, more “I drag her off too my room” wink wink but I wasn’t having it.
As a player it pissed me off and as captain it was my damned ship and I assumed the women NPCs wouldn’t have it either.
I prevented it in character without needing the GM to help but I was also miffed at the players.
I’ve enjoyed being stalked and threatened by a particular Villain in a game but that same GM put in a rape/captive scene for another player without asking, on the excuse that she was into BDSM, which we all had to have a talk about. We stopped speaking to him when he did something physical to that same player without consent in real life. They were casually involved but he crossed a line, so boundary issues in one area suggest boundary issues in others.
More on the consent side, I’ve played with people who had abuse in the character background, and with some NPC’s with boundary issues. Like one vampire who was formally a young prostitute who was very much groomed by his sire and still had a complicated relationship with him. Some villains can get dark and close to lines but we never treat it like a casual throw away bad guy thing. But those games are with friends I’ve known for a while and trust.
We recently ran into a completely uncalled for rape scene in a Vampire module and while prepping it we were like, “wait, this later scene will not happen because I’m pretty sure one of us will have already killed this guy.” The guy ended up getting his head crushed off screen by my ghoul Giantess.
It’s a dark ages Vampire game and I’m a Tzimisce so my character herself is already committing major human rights violations, including overseeing “breeding” in our Revenants, so I’m violating the autonomy of NPCs but it stays within genre and with in game purpose. There is a line between dark games, and sick stuff that seems like wish fulfillment, and you really want to know folks for a while before you even think about dropping some things into a game.
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I played the old Vampire the Masquerade, and playing the new 5E. We have some horrible monsters in game, but not rape. Vampires are no longer sexual creatures. Some use sex or mimic it as a way to entrap and feed. So unless it’s NPCs doing it to each other, not sure how that would fit the game world (with the caveat that the GM and players decided to alter the game world.)
Vampire in its base form is the character trying to live their unlife doing objectively monstrous things, with out completely ridding themselves of all humanity. It certainly can get dark quick. If someone is playing their character gratuitously, they are going to lose all their humanity quickly, and those characters get ended by whomever is in charge of the area because they are drawing too much attention and putting holes in the Masquerade. At least ideally. If the GM doesn’t have control, or is encouraging that behavior then it probably isn’t going to work out for some people.
Like I said I must be incredibly lucky. Well, I GM half the games I’ve played, but thus far the GMs I’ve been with haven’t ever been jerks like this.
As an aside, if you want to trade character back stories some times, pm me. It’s fun to see how others set stuff up.
It was in Clash of Will: A Story for Vampire The Dark Ages. White Wolf Studios 1997.
Both a mortal and a vampire completely taken over by the beast commit acts of sexual assault in from of the players. It was peak 90’s “edgy”.
We were using it to give a little intro to some characters we are going to play long term.
We’re playing Elders with a Childer each and several retainers. One player is playing a demon and it’s minions instead. We’re running round robin storytelling in the style of Ars Magica. So not everyone plays their powerful elder the whole time and the goal is to time skip several times possibly making it all the way to modern nights, possibly with some drastic time line changes depending on what we do. We might seriously mess with history.
I’ve been living on Wikipedia and Google maps placing important stuff and figuring out what mortals were in the actual area and time then figuring out the White Wolf timeline and how to reconcile those, what to keep, what to fudge.
My character is quickly going to abandon the path of Humanity for the path of Metamorphosis. But I probably won’t join the Sabbat after the Anarch Rebellion.
Edit: Running with the Vampire 20th rules.
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I like it. I too have done a research into mine to make it fit historically. (I had to fudge the time line just a little for when professional mourners and professional hermits were a thing.)
And in game I am enjoying it so much, that when there was a screw up with the Circulatory System that left 53 bodies, I went and researched into how long it would take me to cremate everything, as well how much ash would be left so that I can show the player what mistakes of this magnitude look like.
I started to give a short synopsis of my character like you did, decided just to copy/paste to google docs and share it. I always type up a page for any character I play, but I got a little carried away. That and the GM is having us all play established elders, so I have a lot of contacts and duties etc.
Enjoy and I hope your game continues to be smashing!
A rule that I found useful in my young RP days is that no other character could do anything to your character that you do not consent with, and if they did, you had the option to override and rewrite what was done to your character in its entirety.
The downside was this led some characters to undertake risky behavior because they didn’t fear the consequences of their actions, but at least no one had to subject themselves to terrible things done to their characters against their will, which was by far the more important thing.
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