Cards allow people to try and get a better grip on unforseen situations consent checklists are there to let the DM know where they can steer and prepare a game ahead of time and help get a grip on tone and content. But they do not, cannot, and never will substitute for having a frank conversation with the table ahead of time, especially if someone has an acute vulnerability they know they can't stomach other people poking. All because somebody decided 'consent checklists' were bullshit and decided to use cards instead.ĭon't get me wrong, cards have their place. All of them are being as understanding and compassionate about the whole thing as they can, and all of them are also upset and frustrated despite trying to be decent people about it. Now Dalton has to eat the guilt and shame of letting his issues scupper a fun night of D&D and flush the DM's work, Bob and Char have to go home hours early and with no cool D&D to play, and Alice has to throw away an entire adventure outline and start from scratch. I'll have something else figured out by next week. And sorry Bob and Char, we're gonna have to adjourn for the night while I figure something else out. If she's a regular DM? "Yeah, it was supposed to be ghosts. If she's an excellent DM, she can bullshit her way through the rest of the session, rewrite her outline on the fly, and figure out something less cool she's able to vomit up on command. She can't use it, and now she has nothing. And in Alice's case? The whole adventure she'd written about seeking to soothe the ancient ghost of an insane fallen knight is spiked. Dalton's not stupid, he can tell what's what. He's in a state of heightened stress, he's having a near brush with his trigger, and also he's having to spike the entire game to avoid his trigger and he knows it. What has happened here? Dalton has already been injured. They freak me all the way out, if this is ghosts I have to leave. Dalton holds up his card and says "Is this ghosts? I can't handle ghosts. She startes describing the adventuring party's exploration of an old abandoned half-ruined keep, scattering a few signs here and there of a spectral presence. As an example, let's say Alice is running a game for Bob, Charlene, and Dalton. They allow an injury to be done in the first place, and they completely tank a game when they come up. All the table flag systems out there do two things. Aside from keeping all these items in mind when you're prepping, you're effectively obligating the entire table to it. I agree with the form size comments - from someone who works in a highly regulated industry with checklists that keep track of tool is just too comprehensive to the point its ineffective. I just, in addition, question the rush to enthusiastic embrace of questionably secure gaming aid with even further questionably useful overall game utility. I'm all for constructively discussing consent and boundaries in games, I do it all the time, and believe I am doing so here. I guess there's a lot more "what are we talking about when we talk about " that push against the presented schema, and again, this form is close to literal work to perform and if thoughtfully addressed would likely take more time than a session 0. There's also tonal notes, do we ask separate lines for the tolerance of stoner humor and another one for looking at the same substance via a lens of culturally complex history. Some games may narratively handwave a carousing good time at the bar turning into a drunken brawl a la Legend of Vox Machina ep 1, others may prefer a literally more sober game. This sort of came up on a thread on mechanics for alcohol. The exhaustiveness is a false claim and plenty of DMs, and even explicit rules sets going back to 80s made distinctions between alcohol, marijuana and related herbal psychoactives, stimulants, opioids, psychedelics etc. For example there's I don't know how many degrees of talking to detailing sex but you got the one liner for "substance abuse/addiction issues." That covers everything from tavern carousing to overdosing on synthetic opioids obtained through sex work or other criminalized behavior. Going into the actual content, I'd say the "exhaustiveness" sort of cherry picks what gets granular interrogation (violence/sex-kink/morbidity) vs. Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse
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