Issues that are too touchy for games?

[Alberic Strein]

You must not have read his post very well...

His whole latter half of the main part of his post was "Take into consideration who you're telling the joke to"

That said, I still disagree. Everyone has the right to make GOOD NATURED jokes. If you're telling jokes to be mean to an already wounded person, you deserve to be thoroughly disabused of the idea that it's okay.

Do you have the right to tell the joke? Freedom of speech, sure. But everyone has the right to shut you the heck up.

Well thanks for the assist!

Anyway, while I didn't adress mean natured jokes in my post, my point lies in the subject of the joke. There is not a single subject, a single thing, that cannot be the subject of a joke. Anybody has the right to joke about anything, any subject, any idea, any concept.

However, and this is where I stop repeating myself, some treatments of the subject of the joke are inappropriate and hurtful and should be avoided in presence of people who wouldn't find it funny. Of course, to some people, any and all treatments of a specific subject will be inappropriate. So the subject itself should be avoided with those people.

It is of course easy to misinterpret the boundaries of another and an inappropriate joke should be called on, excuses should be made, and the story should stop there. A joke, unless it is mean-spirited, at which point it's not even really a joke anymore, does not give insight to the inner beliefs of the joke-teller, does not make him guilty of anything, etc...

Everything lies in the treatment of the subject, the context, and the audience.

And this is where we leave the subjects of bad jokes at a gaming table to go back to the subject of the thread, subjects that are too touchy for games.

Basically, nope. It is entirely possible that what would be an issue for a lot of people wouldn't be so for the DM nor the player of a particular game. It is also possible that while the issue may be problematic for someone at the table, the treatment that the subject gets would not cause any issue. In other words, a touchy subject is often not problematic in itself, it has problematic components which may trigger issues in players -or GMs- and it is possible to completely avoid those problematic components by tastefully treating a touchy subject. This doesn't mean that the subject won't make the players uncomfortable, but it will maintain that feeling to a manageable level, to a point where it is more spice to the gaming experience and is not hurting anyone.

Conversely, anything can be a problematic subject if it is treated with the obvious intent to hurt the people around you.

In other words, and I am again making an echo to Steampunkette's first post in this thread: There are no subjects, no matter how heinous dirty and sad, that should be arbitrarily dropped from all games as a baseline. That being said, tabletop gaming is a social endeavour, ****ing watch yourself.

[Slartibartfast]

It seems like there have been two separate points of primary discussion, and from my perspective (reading through the entire thread at once) they've spent a lot of time being confused together and slowing both discussions down, amidst side discussions. The side discussions are fine, but I'll only address this one, and briefly:


*cough* I'm not sure that discussing Germany's troubled history in this particular way is apropos of even the side-conversation about whether or not censoring certain speech is constructive or not.

If you're going to start a discussion about the effectiveness of hate speech laws, talking about post-Nazi Germany and its hate speech laws is practically mandatory. The only reason not to talk about it is that it would undermine the effectiveness of your argument that hate speech laws are net-harmful. That said, that discussion has tangented pretty far from the topic of this thread.


The tangent seemed to evolve from confusion over the meaning of "trigger" and its misuses propagated by things like Tumblr (which usually really hard, but isn't always effective), through the misuse of the term "safe space" to accomplish things that are not safe spaces, and an implied disagreement over what "hate speech" even is.

A free speech argument was given about saying that gays should not be allowed to get married. This is exactly hate speech. It is rhetoric designed to enforce a limitation of the rights of other people, the rights of gays to perform personal acts which do not interact with or harm others. This rhetoric demeans and dehumanizes gays, and dehumanization facilitates gay bashing. Where human beings are literally beat to death, just for being homosexual. This is in no way acceptable.

---------------

The original question of this thread was "Are there some moral or ethical things that you avoid in your games?" Stories followed of what things we avoid, how and why. The discussion then moved on to two main topics, which as best I can summarize are:

Is any topic too far for games?
How should a system be established to ensure that a specific game does not go too far for its players?


The first topic has been generally answered with a "no" by most people, with only scarce and brief disagreement, usually from people who only posted once and said blanket things like "rape should never be depicted", which has generally been agreed is too absolute. Most of the posts related to this topic now amount to "people who aren't up for those games just shouldn't play them" and branches into discussion of how/when players should be expelled from or compelled to leave a group.

The second topic has had brief spurts of interesting philosophizing and debate which begin to contribute to a working model of how to structure such a protocol, but it has not been thoroughly explored. I would genuinely like to see this discussion continued, as this is a real and practical problem that applies to basically every gaming group, even if ignoring the issue only rarely leads to actual problematic situations.

I typically see posts discussing the second topic discussing examples of past games as benchmarks for how boundaries should be customized for specific games as if they are establishing a global boundary for all games, and therefore responded to with a natural backlash against perceived claims of badwrongfun or condonement of the exemplar controversial issue.

Is this all just the big misunderstanding I have perceived, or does the "what is too far for games" question have a real disagreement behind it? If not, may I petition the thread to at least in part resume discussion of such a system?

[GrayGriffin]

The tangent seemed to evolve from confusion over the meaning of "trigger" and its misuses propagated by things like Tumblr (which usually really hard, but isn't always effective)

*hisses* Most of the "misuse" of triggers is by trolls who are deliberately making fun of people. The only reason they seem more populous on Tumblr is because Tumblr staff is incompetent. Anything can be a trigger, and you need to understand that. Like I said before, you experience something and you think about a memory that can be even just vaguely associated with the experience, which can be a bad memory. That's how memories work.

[Steampunkette]

Yeah... there aren't any real transethnic elfsoul hippokin vegans who have self diagnosed schizophrenia and are triggered by any questioning of their identity.

Those are troll blogs making fun of people and passing themselves off as real in order to discredit people with legitimate problems who use tumblr as an outlet and safe space to discuss their mindset, identity, and life. And they are ubiquitous across tumblr because it's an easy way to make fun of people.

Poe's Law. Any position can be seen as so extreme from one's own viewpoint that even satire is confused with reality.

For people with triggers and strong trauma people are quick to dismiss it as real and assume everyone is just lying. Enter the trolls who legitimize the outsider's viewpoint by being patently ridiculous.

[sktarq]

There are also players who will have their characters do terrible things while feeling horrible about it

Not the vein of troubling reactions I was talking about. More only the lines of OOC reactions (or lack of them) to certain in game events. Those reactions, when they surprise you, can be the shocking friendship testing events I was refering to.

Did like the anecdote

[Socratov]

One hate speech laws and free speech I'd like to say that wether on a macro scale (nation/world wide/internet), or a micro scale (community or game table) I find it best to take the middle of the road: restrict too little and people will get hurt mentally, restrict too much and not everyone will have their fill of fun. I think, and I imagine you'll find as well, that if you try to balance these sorts of things that it will work best. If anything goes at your games, people should be able to react to that (you have the right to do and say certian things, but so do I). If you create the option to discuss creating a limit/censor for certain stuff, I have the right to discuss the enabling of that very thing if it drives my story forward. I think that at the end of the day we are all human beings trying to have some fun through a bit of escapism and the only way we are all going to have our way is if we discuss with each other how to achieve maximum fun. I am aware that communicsation is a reall yhard thing to do (evne if it seems so simple) but until we develop telepathic ways of communicating in a more absolute and error-free way we're bound to use our inefficient and often ineffective means of communication. Oh, and as a tip: communication is, when done right, roughly 1/X talking and X-1/X listening, where X is the total number of people present in the communication.


It doesn't stop being a game. At least not in the sense that was being implied. Which is that what somebody does in the game, or says, has a bearing on the outside world or how they would act there. Which isnt necessarily the case.

And even if somebody has a bad reaction to something in a game. That doesn't take it out of what it is. Its still a game, it's just now a game that's uncomfortable for a participant. It doesn't cease being a game, because somebody is troubled by it, even deeply so. Any more than a car backfiring, becomes anything else for somebody that might react badly to that, or a guy with a beard for somebody that might react badly to that. As my issues are my issues, others are others, just because somebody behaves badly in a game, doesn't mean they'll behave badly elsewhere.

snip.


snip
@socratov:

I have to disagree with you there. It still stays a game as all content stays purelly fictional.
Ok, maybe not for, but for the person hurt it stops being a game and start being a way of reexperiencing reality in a way s/he is bothered significantly. Is it logical? No. Is itrational? Hell no. It's why PTSD is a disorder

sni-

Poe's Law. Any position can be seen as so extreme from one's own viewpoint that even satire is confused with reality.

-p

And that's exactly why South Park happens. Especially when considering Mormons and Scientology. I found it hilarious that the creators of South Park had to add lines in the screen going "this is what they actually believe, we are not making this up."

[Roxxy]

I don't really have a lot of places I'm not willing to go because I think they go too far. There are issues, such as sexism of the "women may not serve in combat positions in the military or have meaningful careers" vein that I don't really like to use because they make it hard for me to write the characters I want to write (a lot of my character concepts don't really work if women don't typically serve in the military or see combat), but I don't feel that covering those issues is innappropriate in any way. I just don't want to do it. I do cover homophobia, transphobia, and racism in my settings, though. In fact, in some ways they provide an analog for sexism (I have a setting that is, in many ways, Eberron if the focus was on the Sixties and not the Twenties, and I wanted to do some commentary on gender issues, but I also wanted women in the military or in permanent careers to not really be too unusual, so Sixties feminism doesn't really work for my world. A transgender rights movement, however, provides ample opportunity to have gender related issues to cover in world and have characters who suffer gender related oppression.). I've also talked about slavery and rape. I've never described a rape at the table and never will, but I have told the players that "So-and-so was raped, and this is how bad of an emotional wreck she is". I have not shied away from harming or killing children, and in general my descriptions of violence tend to be bloody and gory. I wouldn't be afraid to describe a scene such as, say, what you'd see if you liberated Aucshwitz in detail.

My games do have a tendency to get real world political. Comes from the fact that I went with the Sixties as a basis, and I'm not afraid to bring modern racial issues, LGBT issues, and economic issues into my world at all. I think at least part of it comes from the way I write my worlds. I have worlds where, materially, people have it pretty good. Every world I write is industrialized to some degree, typically with the aid of magic. Industrial and post industrial standards of living are pretty high compared to the standard D&D/PF settings. People generally aren't starving or dying from disease, every kid goes to school, everybody knows how to read, college is accessible to most, Democracy is a thing, professional police departments are fairly competant, and so on. Compared to Golarion or Forgotten Realms, or even Eberron, it's paradise. Something about the setting has to provide conflict and a sense that this world isn't some utopia. Looking at real world modern and Sixties political issues and expanding them into a fantasy context gives me that "We actually do have some very serious problems in this place, despite how incredibly wealthy this world is" impression. I also tend to focus on the idea that the government keeps the typical D&D monsters and rogue spellcasters under control with trained professionals (What 20th century developed nation wouldn't?), and that the player characters are those professionals. Well, they need something that gives them a sense of being important. Going towards the more brutal end with what these monsters actually do to people if they aren't stopped provides that. Especially since I don't really do "Save the nation/world." plots often. It's more "This winter wolf pack slaughtered four civilians brutally, including a child. They must be stopped before they kill someone else." Gotta do something to make that pack of magic wolves seem menacing and horrible and in need of being destroyed.

[Florian]

@socratov:

As with the whole discussion about triggers, it is important to keep in mind that we're basically talking about two very distinct things that only happen to colide by chance.

One of these concerns the player, and only the player, and his or her condition.
That doesn't concern the game itself. It concerns the social aspect of the game, meaning the fellow players, but not the game. That may sound nickpicky on my part, but an ongoing theme in this discussion, so far, has been who is responsible for whom and an interresting shift in pushing responsibility on others, not on the player that brings his baggage to the table, thereby influencing the game itself with it.

[Socratov]

@socratov:

As with the whole discussion about triggers, it is important to keep in mind that we're basically talking about two very distinct things that only happen to colide by chance.

One of these concerns the player, and only the player, and his or her condition.
That doesn't concern the game itself. It concerns the social aspect of the game, meaning the fellow players, but not the game. That may sound nickpicky on my part, but an ongoing theme in this discussion, so far, has been who is responsible for whom and an interresting shift in pushing responsibility on others, not on the player that brings his baggage to the table, thereby influencing the game itself with it.

Well, that's certainly true, you shouldn't shift responsibility to those whose it's not. However, last I checked DnD is still a group activity and so IMO the group is responsible for the outcome. Sure it follows that if you as a player have trouble with certain aspects fo the game you should mention that, but similarly you can't expect everyone to leave real-world matters out of the game since those matters are what shapes us. Similarly how you can't expect someone to casually provide alist of mental stuff that's going on, especially when it regards triggers that weren't known before. At that point a player shoudl have the right to say "I'm not going through with this" and ask either to leave that particular scene or to tone that particular scene down a bit. however, this is not a license to start dictating what you like and push it onto other by saying "I'm triggered by XYZ and so you must abide by my wishes". If such a thing happens the group can not be held responsible to play with you and should have the option to discuss that player's involvement/sudden lack thereof in their group. Like a DM shouldn't railroad their players, so should a fellow player not railroad the group.

[Frozen_Feet]

Let's go make jokes about people getting their souls sucked out. Soul-sucking doesn't exist IRL, so no one gets offended too terribly.

How about elves getting their souls sucked out?

Such jokes would not be funny if there weren't people who consider souls a real deal.



Separately, I'd like to point out (in support of joke-context being important) that one of the reasons people object to, say, racist humor isn't that they're offensive - it's that they make actual racists more confident in their beliefs. The same applies to homophobic jokes, misogynistic jokes, and so on.

Hey, there was an Onion article about how Harry Potter is work of the Devil. It was meant as a parody of religious fundamentalists. Plenty of actual fundamentalist believed it to be a genuine article of genuine concerns.

Is the sane reaction there to object to the joke, or to object to the people who didn't get it?

Again: humour relies on using transgressive things with benign intent. For any subject matter you can imagine, there are people who don't get where the transgression is, or who mistake the intention of the joker. A sufficiently subtle joke or parody is indistinquishable from a genuine opinion, except, well, they don't even need to be subtle because some people believe in absurd things.

Don't get me wrong: the observation that jokes can reinforce faulty notions is correct. But the conclusions people draw from that observation are often questionable.

Let's go back to satanic panic, just this time, let's focus on Heavy Metal instead of RPGs. In Norway, there are genuine ideological satanic and neo-pagan bands who burn churches and dabble in organized crime. Is their existence a good reason to ban Ghost from making Satanically inspired music? Is it a good reason to shame Tarot for writing Pyre of Gods, because some whacky church-burner thinks it's good motivational song?

My belief is that banning or shaming non-absurd people from/for joking about absurd things is shooting at the wrong target. If I talk about soul-eating elves with my non-satanic friends, that discussion is not immediately broadcast across the world to bolster beliefs of satanists everywhere; there just isn't a mechanic to create a causal link.

To give another analogue, there's a study which shows that soon after hearing racist jokes, people are slightly more amenable to racist thoughts. Sounds worrying, right?

Well. Flynn effect is a thing; it's a name for the observation that IQ test results in developed countries have steadily gone up. There's also the Mozart effect - name for the observation that people do better in IQ tests after listening to classic music.

Based on nothing more than the above, it'd be easy to think classical music increases IQ and hence contributes to the Flynn effect. Indeed, after the Mozart effect was discovered, it was all the craze for parents to make their kids listen to classical music in hopes they'd do better in school.

But, the Mozart effect only lasts for about 15 minutes after the music is heard. Its long-term effect is negligible and hence it can't explain the Flynn effect. The kids didn't benefit in the way that was thought.

Similarly, long-term impact of racist jokes is not well-proven. I don't think it's the vector for creating or spreading racist thoughts we should focus on.

(It's good to remember there are plenty of other short-term psychological effects which can accidentally or purposefully alter a discussion. In a test measuring religiosity, people will appear more religious if you give them only a short time to answer the questions. Women will perform less well in math if you make them focus on their appearance. Violent videogames increase aggression for the course of the game. One Youtube poster, if I recall right, asked people to sign a petition to ban a movie on black slavery (I'm struggling to remember the name here), under the claim the movie was racist - people were willing to sign the petition without seeing the movie. (That's an example of poisoning the wells - in this case it was just done to prove a point, though, namely the point that poisoning the wells works.))

What things we should focus on, then? Faulty stereotypes persists when people seclude themselves from one another. One thing that typically works to remedy that is actual interaction between groups who have faulty stereotypes of one another. In case of RPGs, this means actually playing different types of games with people who like and make them, leaving the boundaries of your own comfort zone. There's one black guy who made a habit of meeting Klan dragons to convince them to take off their hoods. It worked, because even if just for a moment, he managed to create a sense of mutual goodwill.

I won't dwell on this second point much, because the salient point in my writing is that before you can even begin to deal with absurd people, you first have to distinquish them from non-absurd people. You can't do that if you lump them together due to coincidental similarities and misunderstanding of what they're trying to achieve.

[goto124]

I wonder what if a pitch for a game included this statement:

"This game will include a male rape-victim. If you're too uncomfortable with that, or if you think males getting raped is some sort of joke or otherwise not as serious as females getting raped, please do not join the game. Thank you."

This might've shown that the criteria for joining a game with [touchy topic] may require not just comfort with that topic, but also being mature and having knowledge on that topic. Or at least, everyone in the group share the same knowledge and/or general opinion on that topic.

[Florian]

I wonder what if a pitch for a game included this statement:

"This game will include a male rape-victim. If you're too uncomfortable with that, or if you think males getting raped is some sort of joke or otherwise not as serious as females getting raped, please do not join the game. Thank you."

This might've shown that the criteria for joining a game with [touchy topic] may require not just comfort with that topic, but also being mature and having knowledge on that topic. Or at least, everyone in the group share the same knowledge and/or general opinion on that topic.

What exactly is the question here?
I think the description is clear, the parameters are clear and there is no point of discussion, unless someone wants to force that points, breaking the limits of the game.

[Frozen_Feet]

@Slartibartfast:

Okay, let's talk about how Ropecon, biggest and oldest RPG convention in Finland, does things.

There's a standard template which is filled with name, duration, location and short description (max. 400 words etc.) of the game. People sign up for participation, up to maximum number of players noted. There are also three or four boxes for additional information of the game: "this game is suitable for beginners", "this game contains mature content", "This game can be run in English" etc.. The GM can check these boxes as they see fit.

This is what amounts to "Session 0" for any pre-announced game. A typical game lasts from 1 to 4 hours, so there isn't time to dig deep into what bothers who if you want to, you know, play the actual game.

As pertains to this discussion, the "mature content" box is perhaps the most important. It basically means "anything goes". If the game's genre is Horror or Cyberpunk, you can be pretty sure all the nasty tropes of those things are in play.

You don't need more warning than that due to the scope of the event and self-selection. A single GM can handle maybe 10 players at most, the event has 3000+ people attending it. In my years as a GM there, I've never heard of someone getting an anxiety attack due to a tabletop game. The closest to that happened when an arachnophobic came to my table. She shut her eyes, put hands on her ears and thought happy thoughts for the five minutes it took for the rest of us to resolve the scene. Me, the GM didn't have to do diddly squat about it, she was perfectly happy about her solution, and it didn't come up again.

At a table, the game master obviously has authority to tell a person to leave. Just as obviously, any player can leave the table for whatever reason.Because this is public event, there are also troubleshooters who can and will remove any player (up to and including dragging them off in cuffs) who doesn't respect a GM, grossly misbehaves or breaks the rules of the event in non-game-related ways (shows up to the table drunk as a cuckoo, physically harasses a player etc.).

There's a slightly different method for scenario design contest mini-games and games-on-demand type affairs. There, the GM or a troubleshooter acts as a bouncer, hand-picking players from the crowd and trying to sell a game to them with a short pitch. Game begins when enough [s]unfortunate victims[/i[ willing players have been gathered. (We had a strange array of themes this year, from political satire dressed as sci-fi to zombie horror to a night at the club where on character is revealed to have leukemia and another attempts suicide.)

LARPs follow the model for pre-announced tabletop games, but may have additional safety measures, like safewords in style of martial arts.

I acknowledge much of this moves at a higher level than invidual games or games held at someone's private residence. If there's something to take away from it, it's that you don't need a long Session 0 to get complete strangers to play nice for a couple of hours, and it's more important to tell people there's a chance of shocking content than to have a deep discussion of what those offensive things are. If you're still worried of someone's mental or physical health, either teach your players a safeword or what the arachnophobic girl did above.

---

Now, let's dig deeper. As noted, the GM is the "table psychologist", insofar as they're the one running the show.

This doesn't necessarily mean getting to know deep personal traumas of your players or a long discussion of what whoever finds offensive (see above), but it does mean being watchful of emotions around the table.

Now, a post in Psychology Today stuck with me. It examined which sort of relationships last and which don't.

The important thing is to have low treshold of negativity, but not being, well, actually negative. "Treshold of negativity" means how hard it is for players to say if there's a problem. If it is low, they will say so when the problem occurs, if it is high, they won't publicly say it, indeed, might never say it.

The harder part is teaching everyone, including yourself, to present feedback in a benign, constructive manner. The more dismissive, shaming, controlling or threatening you are towards those who displease you, the less they will think of you and the higher the chance of backlash is.

Instead, the tone must be polite or joking, it must present viable alternatives and ideally, you will make it seem like it was the problem player's idea to begin with.

As the GM, you want to minimize "bleed" - that of real person relationships affecting in-game relationships, or vice versa. Here we once again get back to the old "relax, this is a game". If, f.ex., two of the players are brothers or spouses who always bicker, it's the GM's job to step between them or distract them from one another so the game can continue.

In-game actions should have in-game penalties as far as possible. If a problem can be solved by booting a character out of a party, don't kick the player out from the group! Make your players think of how their characters would deal with a transgression. A benched character doesn't have to be permanently removed from a game. Consider models where a player can shift to another when their primary character goofs up.

Only when it's obvious player antagonism persists regardless of which characters are being played, should the players be split apart. (By "player antagonism", I don't mean PvP - I mean players seriously hating each others' guts. This can happen in a co-operative game just as well, indeed, it can even be worse there than in PvP because it typically leads the game to a screeching halt.) Preferably, both arguing players ought to take a break , to avoid accusations of favoritism, and for a limited time (f. ex.15 minutes) to start with. Again, a permanent solution should only be applied if lesser ones don't cool emotions down.

I'm not saying a GM can't pick a side - they can if one side is genuinely more correct and behaving better. This is just unlikely when you end face-to-face with real interpersonal trouble. Remember that bit about what makes a good relationship? Any bad one is going to be the opposite. Either they bottle up feelings until they explode or resort to nagging, being negative nellies about everything. In short, they're both idiots, and you can't say it like that without making the situation much worse.

It should be noted that the Pareto principle applies even to small groups like RPG play groups. One person does the most work (typically the GM) while others do less, but also one person causes the most trouble (hopefully, not also the GM). When you finally decide you need to say goodbye to someone, you want to be sure it's the right person. Wrong choice can kill the game, because you removed your best contributor, or failed to remove the worst antisocialite. Though, as notes, these can be the same person, and they can be you. In such cases, it's a no-win situation.

Anyways, I'm starting to ramble. What else? Oh, yeah: remember to keep track of time and watch who speaks and how much. One person does the most talking also (again, typically the GM). You want to make sure this results from natural inclinations of the players - some people are shyer or prefer watching from the sidelines - rather than just caused by one assertive player hogging the spotlight when another equally talkative but slightly-less-assertive is brooding in their shadow. Here, this can become a question of specific game mechanics. The GM can hand out turns, keep track of clock, let players choose one speaker from among themselves etc.

[Slartibartfast]

Poe's Law. Any position can be seen as so extreme from one's own viewpoint that even satire is confused with reality.


*hisses* Most of the "misuse" of triggers is by trolls who are deliberately making fun of people. The only reason they seem more populous on Tumblr is because Tumblr staff is incompetent. Anything can be a trigger, and you need to understand that. Like I said before, you experience something and you think about a memory that can be even just vaguely associated with the experience, which can be a bad memory. That's how memories work.

What I'm attempting to imply is not that triggers are not a real or serious thing, but that the exact understanding of what a trigger is has actually become blurred and varied. Not everyone means the same thing when using the term, and some of the interpretations are significantly less valid, and direct responses to hotbeds of mixed usage and intent like Tumblr as evidence that the concept itself is invalid are themselves invalid.

I'm actually saying that triggers are real things and need to be respected, but that we're not all talking about the same thing when we say that, which is likely the source of at least some of the contention surrounding the validity of triggers, safe spaces, and hate speech on this thread.


Those are troll blogs making fun of people and passing themselves off as real in order to discredit people with legitimate problems who use tumblr as an outlet and safe space to discuss their mindset, identity, and life. And they are ubiquitous across tumblr because it's an easy way to make fun of people.

For people with triggers and strong trauma people are quick to dismiss it as real and assume everyone is just lying. Enter the trolls who legitimize the outsider's viewpoint by being patently ridiculous.

This is another legitimate point which is a separate, but tightly intertwined problem. For any real problem, there exist *******s and/or troubled people who amplify or coopt the real problem as a tool for themselves to the detriment of the actual sufferers of that problem. Due to confirmation bias, it becomes easy to point at these people as evidence the entire issue is not real, despite the inherent falsity of the claim.

Above and beyond dealing with the core problem, there becomes a layered problem with identifying which sufferers of a given issue are actually afflicted with the issue, and how to deal both with them and those who are not but are mimicking the symptoms for their own ends.

That's a hard problem, because even if you identify a false sufferer, that doesn't mean they aren't doing it as manifestion of a different emotional wound they can't be as up-front about or have themselves legitimately mistaken. Trying to help everyone gets increasingly complicated, and it is difficult to justify punishment of the involved parties, including ignoring them. And yet, SOMETHING has to be done.

[Slartibartfast]

@socratov:

I have to disagree with you there. It still stays a game as all content stays purelly fictional.


Ok, maybe not for, but for the person hurt it stops being a game and start being a way of reexperiencing reality in a way s/he is bothered significantly. Is it logical? No. Is itrational? Hell no. It's why PTSD is a disorder.


I have to agree and disagree with both of you. It stays a game, but it was never purely fictional to begin with. One of the reasons we have to talk about player/character separation at all is exactly because it's not just a game, it's also a social interaction. (There is a deeper argument that no multiplayer game is ever "just" a game, at least to a minor degree, simply by the involvement of other people, but that's less relevant.)

When players say things at the table, they are mostly doing it as themselves, or as their character. The game isn't talking, the player is. The person listening to them isn't the game either, they're another player. And that is the insidious route by which reality forces itself into the game; because we're still people doing this. Attempting to maintain proper player/character and reality/story separation at all times is a perhaps admiral goal, but a futile one. At some level, things from are game are drawn from reality (if perhaps at a few levels of indirection) and they are about subjects that, while not themselves real, are at least as real as any hypothetical. Moreso, due to the extended commitment and attachment to the roleplay.

At some point, player/character separation is going to break down, completely against the will of the player for whom it crumbles. Something is brought up which is too reminiscent of something that troubles the player, and the game doesn't imagine it - their own mind does. Now they have this thought in their mind, and it brings up any associated memories and traumas it has attached to it. You can't tell the player to ignore it any more than you can tell a war veteran to ignore the nearby sounds of gunfire coming from the television - it's effected them deep in their psyche and no humanly available supply of willpower can protect them anymore.

This is a trigger. Their trauma has now been triggered. Regardless of whether anyone, including the victim, knew about this beforehand, it has now happened. The only question is how to shift, alter, or avoid the issue/player to allow the game to continue and the player to avoid further harm.

The most salient issues are how to work to avoid triggers preemptively (which will never be 100% successful, but improving the system retains merit), and how to deal with them once they have arisen.

EDIT: Sorry for the double post, I had a lot of words floating around and got the buttons mucked up.

@Frozen_feet: Thank you, that's a lot to think about!

[Alberic Strein]

Above and beyond dealing with the core problem, there becomes a layered problem with identifying which sufferers of a given issue are actually afflicted with the issue, and how to deal both with them and those who are not but are mimicking the symptoms for their own ends.

That's a hard problem, because even if you identify a false sufferer, that doesn't mean they aren't doing it as manifestion of a different emotional wound they can't be as up-front about or have themselves legitimately mistaken. Trying to help everyone gets increasingly complicated, and it is difficult to justify punishment of the involved parties, including ignoring them. And yet, SOMETHING has to be done.
Is it? Oh well, probably over the internet where things become extremely blurred. But as far as real-life goes? I am not particularly witty, smart, nor cunning, but i can spot, let's not call them false sufferers, but empathic sufferers, or exaggerated sufferers, from a mile away. And I use the metric system.

I do not claim to be an expert on any subject, but I have real life experience of people suffering from molestation as children. They opened up about it once, we had a talk, and never again. I had the recurring fear that, well, something horrible would have explained their sometimes erratic behaviours but I never had anything solid to feed those fears, until they confirmed them. These people just want to be left alone regarding the subject. They just want to get on with their lives and move on. Of course this traumatic event shapes them even to this day but they refused to be defined by it, in a sense they refuse it to be a part of the being they are now. It's something that happened to them, but it doesn't mean jack **** about who they are.

Now, these people might not have the "mainstream" reaction, they may not be representative of the people who suffered from that kind of ****, but a million is a statistic, a horrible story is but colored pixels on an otherwise colored sea of pixels, maybe all those are real, but I still perceive those as information, not even second-hand information. To me, to my understanding, and it is flawed, the people I know who suffered this kind of **** are the real people who suffered through this, not all those billions and billions people through history who had terrible life.

I'm not making any damn sense, so to make it short, real but unrelated people are not your representation of people who suffered through traumatic events, the real people you know and love are.

And the people I know are quiet about their past, and want the people they are today to have as little as possible in common with the event.

And then there is that one girl who wears statistics, and failing to convince me with those -I worked on surveys, numbers don't mean ****- she will wear her traumatic experiences as a badge, to jusify her views on the world, and how she is right and I am wrong, of course, since I am a priviledged 20+ cis-gendered and heterosexual white man, how dare I, being so blessed by life and fate, disagree to her views, her the banner of the mistreated? In other words a complete and utter 180° from the other people I know who suffered through ****. And much, much deeper and worse **** than she even dares to claim.

Now, you're going to say, this is heavily dependant on my personal experience, and my vision of things. How is someone else, who maybe doesn't know of some people who suffered through that kind of ****, easily spot Empathic sufferers? And isn't my view of things horribly biased? After all I choose to decide that she is an empathic sufferer and not an actual sufferer of the things she claims, and can then use the difference between her behaviour and the one from the other people in my life to discredit her claim. But it is entirely possible that her behaviour is in the range of possible reactions to that kind of past traumatic event, so it's not conclusive evidence.
Just nod. What I call empathic sufferers will start upping their claims, as her talk goes on it will come to light that she suffers from every blight in the world, that she is possibly hunted by all the dangerous elements this horribly hostile world has, and that every **** that can happen, will happen, and to her. Also she will start disregarding calls to the fact that other people have suffered through what she claims, possibly with "We're talking about ME now!" -not making any of this up- and given enough time she will start claiming some utterly, UTTERLY ridiculous bull**** true. Like being the reincarnation of a goddess for example. Still not making anything up, by the way. And she will claim so completely straight faced. With the exact same straight face that she claimed all her previous bull**** to be true before. At this point, you can safely disregard her claims as bull****.

It's not that she is a drama queen, it's just that she is actually suffering from something that brings her to bring attention to her, pathologically so. That doesn't make her someone who is not suffering in her life, psychosomatic issues are not issues you have control over, even if she didn't actually experience anything she claims to have.

This is a quick and easy (just a couple of nods and a poker face) way to tell them apart. Now what to do with the empathic sufferer once you've identified her as one I got no idea. Right now I'm trying to only respond to her normal everyday bull****, not the insane one, we'll see how it works. So yeah, what to do with them when identified is still a hard problem, but identifying them is not, at least in real life.

Ps: Also if before mentioning any of the torturous hell she's been through she jumps on the first occasion, the very first time you see her, during the first hour of your conversation to mention her failed suicide attempts... Well, it's a dead giveaway.

[Slartibartfast]

Is it? Oh well, probably over the internet where things become extremely blurred. But as far as real-life goes? I am not particularly witty, smart, nor cunning, but i can spot, let's not call them false sufferers, but empathic sufferers, or exaggerated sufferers, from a mile away. And I use the metric system.

I wasn't talking about identification, I was talking about proper handling.

Ostensibly, we're talking about a social situation where the people involved are people who, at a bare minimum, it would be convenient to be able to continue spending time with, if not you actual friends. Once you have identified them as a false sufferer, do you confront them about it, treat them more or less like an actual sufferer, etc.? The different approaches have different results and on off-hand inspection there is no clearly superior option.

Compound this with what anyone with mild attachment to the individual needs to be thinking: *Why* are they pretending to suffer from this affliction? This is pretty indicative that, even if it's not what they are claiming, *something* is wrong. If you're planning to run more sessions with this individual, you're going to want to either drill down and address their actual problem or find a way to work around it, both of which being more difficult because you can't identify the root cause, only the fake surface affliction.

I am treating the false sufferer as a human being who demands my help as much as a true sufferer. There is the problem of keeping the game going, and also helping this individual as a friend. The latter may later be dropped as a lost cause, and the former may eventually resort to removing the individual from the game, but there should be attempts to resolve both issues. And, by the nature of this problem, it will be riddled with details and unique circumstance which makes navigating and resolving the issue(s) difficult.



And the people I know are quiet about their past, and want the people they are today to have as little as possible in common with the event.

Attempting to distance oneself from past events, or separation from past events, is itself a form of being shaped by past events. Causality is unavoidable, and while free will is nice to think about and is true to an extent, there is also a level at which we all have human brains which are prone to certain patternistic reactions.


And then there is that one girl who wears statistics, and failing to convince me with those -I worked on surveys, numbers don't mean ****- she will wear her traumatic experiences as a badge, to jusify her views on the world, and how she is right and I am wrong, of course, since I am a priviledged 20+ cis-gendered and heterosexual white man, how dare I, being so blessed by life and fate, disagree to her views, her the banner of the mistreated? In other words a complete and utter 180° from the other people I know who suffered through ****. And much, much deeper and worse **** than she even dares to claim.

She sounds like a very troubled individual. By what exactly, it's hard to say; I'd make a wild guess it's discrimination related, but I have no idea if it is experienced or perceived discrimination, personally or in general. Whatever it is, she clearly isn't coping well.

Some people can go through unimaginably hard things and manage, some people can go through "merely" very hard times and come out broken. An individual who has suffered worse with less problems is not particularly relevant to a troubled individual.

At some level the consideration has to come down to how attached you are to the individual and how far you are willing to go for them. For some people that isn't very far, and that's okay. For a gaming group, you have to consider not only your own extent of involvement, but also the group's. Kicking out someone that everyone else has no problem with might be indicative that you are the problem, or that the problem solely exists between the two of you (see Frozen_feet's "they're both idiots" paragraph).

This view is taking the "table psychologist" view to heart both as a GM or a player. If these are people you are gaming with, than at least to some extent they are your friends, and the friends of your friends. To at least that extent, you should help and accommodate them.

I think is very easy in the abstract of this thread to forget that these are the actual people you are sitting around a table with, people you will have some level of established relationship with. Obviously there are other sorts of detached or one-off games, but for the standard core of a (daily/weekly/monthly) tabletop group, you have relationships with these people that need to be maintained or the group, and the game, cease to exist. And beyond that, these are real people who you likely feel empathy for. "If they can't deal with it, it's their problem" rapidly becomes an insufficient or outright useless argument.

[Frozen_Feet]

@Slartibartfast:

This is a minor disagreement considering your overall point, but I want to point it out nonetheless as we already touched upon it in earlier discussion of PvP with NichG & Co:

"Relax, this is [just] a game" and similar phrases didn't start with RPGs, they're ubiquitous in all games starting with children's play. It has nothing to do with fiction nor player/character separation, because most games are not purposefully used for creation of fiction and there is no such separation; in most games, people play as themselves.

Rather, "it is [just] a game" means "these actions are done inside special context of the game rules and should not be used to judge how people act outside the game". Contrast the other similar phrase that's been part of this thread, "it's [just] a joke".

Imagine an adult man chasing a little girl across a yard. The girl falls flat to the ground and the man forcibly picks her up from the ground while the girl struggles, kicks and screams.

Later, you pass by the same yard and see the man prone on the ground. A group of little girls is pulling his limbs and clothes in every direction in order to get him to move.

Did I just describe a scene of heinous crimes and a wicked cycle of revenge, or did I describe a scout leader and a bunch of girl scouts playing a game called Watchdog where the catcher attempts to catch and lift up the other players before they reach the other end of the playfield?

[Alberic Strein]

I wasn't talking about identification, I was talking about proper handling.
Yeah, noticed too late, edited before I saw your answer.

Ostensibly, we're talking about a social situation where the people involved are people who, at a bare minimum, it would be convenient to be able to continue spending time with, if not you actual friends. Once you have identified them as a false sufferer, do you confront them about it, treat them more or less like an actual sufferer, etc.? The different approaches have different results and on off-hand inspection there is no clearly superior option.

Compound this with what anyone with mild attachment to the individual needs to be thinking: *Why* are they pretending to suffer from this affliction? This is pretty indicative that, even if it's not what they are claiming, *something* is wrong. If you're planning to run more sessions with this individual, you're going to want to either drill down and address their actual problem or find a way to work around it, both of which being more difficult because you can't identify the root cause, only the fake surface affliction.
Psychology 101 is that you're not a psychologist. Unless you are. In which case Psychology 101 is not relevant to you anymore. Anyway, after years and years of trying, the one thing I can claim for sure is that you won't work their problem out for them. You can't address the problem and most of the time telling them to keep quiet about it during the game to leave space for the other players won't work, as for at least one of them, the goal is to attract attention by being special, so telling them not to in a social situation with a crowd possibly about to listen to them is going to be counter-productive. Snapping at them does not work either, they see it as betrayal, they want you to believe them, even when they're lying to you because this is how you prove that you love them more than reason, which is their -or at least her- goal, to be loved no matter what rationality says. Even if you can identify the root of the issue you can't do anything about it, because only they can, with professional help. And even then it's not 100%. Don't try, it's a foretold loss. I will be the first to launch inappropriate jokes at psychology majors sitting on their thumbs all day and occasionally quoting Freud -or more exactly how Freud was wrong about everything- but this major exists for a reason. One cannot be a psychologist for his friends, or everyone would learn to as Good Friend 101 and psychologists wouldn't exist.

I am treating the false sufferer as a human being who demands my help as much as a true sufferer. There is the problem of keeping the game going, and also helping this individual as a friend. The latter may later be dropped as a lost cause, and the former may eventually resort to removing the individual from the game, but there should be attempts to resolve both issues. And, by the nature of this problem, it will be riddled with details and unique circumstance which makes navigating and resolving the issue(s) difficult.
Which makes you both right and a good friend. A pretty good position to be in. Also a better human being than I am, since in the end my outraged rage at mimicing their gross overexaggeration of what people suffering from what they claim to suffer are like while there are, unbeknowst to them, actual people like that in the room ends up keeping me from remembering that yes, the empathic sufferer in front of me is actually suffering for realsies and I should do my utmost to help.

Except that what would help them is professional help. So in the end, when you can't do anything for someone, the next step is protecting yourself, because letting yourself get caught up in it and feeling miserable about it is only aggravating the problem.

[Slartibartfast]

@frozen_feet:
Sure, context is important, and I focused perhaps excessively on the specific example of roleplaying and didn't build backward to games in general (or social activity in general) as much as I could.

I think my point revolved around that, as powerful of a lusory or immersive context you produce, there is an inextricable portion of reality, and some (often, or usually, unexpected) things can, for an individual, reprioritize or reassert reality over the game environment.

[Frozen_Feet]

@Slartibartfast: I don't disagree with you. Of things discussed in this thread, "bleed", phobias and stress disorders are all examples of such phenomena. Lots of much more mundane things can count, like a phone ringing.

@Alberic Strein: that attitude of "Psychology 101: you're not a psychologist" was heavily criticized in the book I mentioned. ("Älkää säätäkö päätänne - vika on todellisuudessa") It gives a wrong idea of psychology being just for experts, when in truth psychology contains immediately usable, even vital, tools and information to any person in a position of responsibility, such a GM. If I was to write a new RPG, I would certainly incorporate such informarion asnit is taught to leaders in other hobbies (scouts, martial arts, team sports) into the GM's advice, because that's an aspect that could do with some improving.

I mean, there are parallels to "you're not a psychologist" in other fields of life. Like "you're not a handyman". Yeah, well, maybe the hypothetical you didn't spend three years studying maintenance, heating, plumbing and air-conditioning, but it's not like you absolutely need that to switch the damn lightbulb or clean your own sink. Yet, because people are 1) lazy and 2) told it's someone else's problem, they end up calling the handyman anyway. A playgroup probably won't call a psychologist, but they might end up disbanding or kicking people out over something fairly trivial.

[Alberic Strein]

@Alberic Strein: that attitude of "Psychology 101: you're not a psychologist" was heavily criticized in the book I mentioned. ("Älkää säätäkö päätänne - vika on todellisuudessa") It gives a wrong idea of psychology being just for experts, when in truth psychology contains immediately usable, even vital, tools and information to any person in a position of responsibility, such a GM. If I was to write a new RPG, I would certainly incorporate such informarion asnit is taught to leaders in other hobbies (scouts, martial arts, team sports) into the GM's advice, because that's an aspect that could do with some improving.

I mean, there are parallels to "you're not a psychologist" in other fields of life. Like "you're not a handyman". Yeah, well, maybe the hypothetical you didn't spend three years studying maintenance, heating, plumbing and air-conditioning, but it's not like you absolutely need that to switch the damn lightbulb or clean your own sink. Yet, because people are 1) lazy and 2) told it's someone else's problem, they end up calling the handyman anyway. A playgroup probably won't call a psychologist, but they might end up disbanding or kicking people out over something fairly trivial.
Yup.

No really, that's it. Yup, you're right. I would even say that you do learn psychology in a day to day basis as you socially interact with people and try to understand why and how they react this way. Also, actual psychologists can explain stuff to you, vulgarize to a level where you can understand, and use, knowledge even though you haven't read three to five years' worth of books. And indeed, you do learn some useful psychology in Good Friend 101.

Basically anyone with practice can hammer a nail, build up a shelf, drill a hole through a wall, etc... And psychology is the same.

However, dealing with a person, an acquaintance, a friend you have lots of empathy for, you love even, with psychosomatic issues is not the psychology equivalent of hammering a nail. I fail to see what would be an actual handyman comparison, though. But anyway you can't just whiff it.

We all have behaviours and we can all learn to deal with our behaviours and the behaviours of others. We ALSO have problematic behaviours and we can ALSO deal with them. Then there are pathological behaviours in which case the unknowing but well meaning cannot bring a solution to the problem. Some people spend a lot of their professional lives dealing and learning to deal with these issues as doctors and even then it's a crapshoot.

You should of course always strive to help your friends in need. You should also always try to be the smartest about it, possibly using psychology to that effect (and to great effect!) but you cannot be professional help to your friends. And sometimes they need it.

[Florian]

I don't really get a grip on your point there, so please clarify it: Should people work on their perception and knowledge, aka empathy or not?

[Alberic Strein]

Yes they should. But there are limits to one's competency, you cannot replace an actual licensed psychologist when confronted with pathological conditions.

[Slartibartfast]

Not being able to replace a licensed psychologist and not having an ability or obligation to help are on different orders of magnitude, and the one has less to do with the other than it might. I'm not sure if you are or not, but be careful that you aren't magnifying "others can do it better" to "I shouldn't even try".

[Florian]

Yes they should. But there are limits to one's competency, you cannot replace an actual licensed psychologist when confronted with pathological conditions.

You know what the actual joke in this discussion is so far?
People seem to expect that a gm is actually good at that stuff, notices it and reacts to it accordingly.
Maybe its time tone tone down expectations to a realistic level?

This joke is enhanced by this very situation. The only people left oarticipation in this very discussion are seemingly the ones that really care....

[Alberic Strein]

Not being able to replace a licensed psychologist and not having an ability or obligation to help are on different orders of magnitude, and the one has less to do with the other than it might. I'm not sure if you are or not, but be careful that you aren't magnifying "others can do it better" to "I shouldn't even try".
Oh no, you should definitely try to help, as honestly as possible too. And in a number of occasions your support will mean a lot, even more to the concerned person. But pathological-level bullsh*t? You can't fix it. Don't even try to fix it. Support the person as much as possible, do mention getting professional help and if she seems opposed to the idea, drop it it won't work against her will anyway. And do keep supporting her/him. So yeah, you shouldn't even try to fix a problem waaaay out of your area of expertise. Supporting the person, that you can do, but even then depending on the situation this can become toxic.

Also, yes. If "others" is "Licensed professionals" then yes, "others" can do it better.


You know what the actual joke in this discussion is so far?
People seem to expect that a gm is actually good at that stuff, notices it and reacts to it accordingly.
Maybe its time tone tone down expectations to a realistic level?

This joke is enhanced by this very situation. The only people left oarticipation in this very discussion are seemingly the ones that really care....
And ones with at least a peripheral awareness to players having a bad time. Or at least won't pretend to not notice.

You could even say that I'm even more an extremist than that in that, to me, if you're GM'ing for less than 6 people you will definitely notice a player having a bad time. It's a freaking live human right in front of you! You have some neurones which are specifically dedicated to getting and treating that kind of information. Humans are programmed to "get it" when somebody is feeling bad. It's not Basic Human Being 101, but pretty damn close! How the hell do you miss that?!

Well, thanks to the other people, the game, and also the fact that your attention is focused on whether it is socially acceptable or not to take another chips.

And also tabletop roleplaying not being known for the incredible social acuity of its hobbyists.

Reacting accordingly to a player flying of his rocker is hard, noticing it, not so much. Or at least it shouldn't.

[NichG]

To me, the main point of 'you're not a psychologist' is that you have to expect as a GM that your goal of 'create an enjoyable gaming environment for this social group' and 'help this individual' can come into conflict. If it were just you, then its completely up to you whether you go out of your way to help address someone's problems, but when there are third parties involved then it could end up being a conflict of interest, just as much as if you were to show a spouse or lover special treatment at the gaming table. Your relationship with them is important, sure, but if you're acting as a GM then you need to compartmentalize that for the duration that you're being the GM (of course, if the rest of the players are game for it and you're all getting together to help Bob have catharsis or something, then that works out just fine)

The point definitely shouldn't be 'don't try to understand your players' psychology'.

[goto124]

In-game actions should have in-game penalties as far as possible. If a problem can be solved by booting a character out of a party, don't kick the player out from the group! Make your players think of how their characters would deal with a transgression. A benched character doesn't have to be permanently removed from a game. Consider models where a player can shift to another when their primary character goofs up.

... please describe those models. What sort of questions would I tell the players? What thoughts would I attempt to encourage in my players? How do I have a system of "dealing with problematic players"? What would that system look like? Where can I grab a PDF to start with?

[Frozen_Feet]

@Goto: the character relations in RPGs are meant to simulate relationships between people. So, f.ex., if the point of the game is to work as a team [against opposition set by the GM], the first step is to get the players to apply the above information of players dealing with players for characters dealing with characters.

In its most basic, this can mean the characters voting for one among them to be the party leader. The leader has the right to give warnings and temporarily or permanently fire a character, in case the character acts antagonistic towards other, or acts incompetently (shows up to an adventure drunk or without gear). You can use team sports as inspiration - you get two yellow cards and then a red one and your out.

The benched character then has to return to home base or keep adventuring on their own for the rest of the session. If playing this out would be too much trouble, the player switches to playing a secondary character, such as 1) a cohort, 2) a retainer or a 3) familiar of their character or the group's.

For example, in an OSR game where retainers are common, you could say each player plays the retainer(s) of the player sitting next to them, if any, in case their primary character is benched. (You can apply the exact same solution to dead characters.)

In an OSR game, you could also apply penalties like lessened share of treasure, typically meaning less XP.

The point is not to stop characters from acting stupid or antagonistic. The point is to make clear that other characters are allowed to call them out for that and reactions to it are fair game. In short, the metagame assumption that the characters are a group of friends only applies insofar as the characters are roleplayed as a group of friends.

If a player plays one character as (f.ex.) drunken scumbag (while accepting the in-game penalties), and another character as disapproving of that character and acting with the group, we then know the player's playing the scumbag because that's a role they want to play, rather than the player just being clueless and expecting others to put up with their cluelessness because of the metagame assumption "but we're supposed to be a party!"

[goto124]

Wouldn't the antagonistic character still be... antagonistic? Disruptive to the gameplay?