Safety Tools: A Discussion

[KaussH]

I think it comes down to how you weigh their value vs potential for abuse. No one denies that they can be helpful in certain situations, but if you believe that they are also harmful to potential communication and understanding or can be used to abuse in-game mechanics, both can be true but one can hold more weight than the other in their opinion.

Like it's not that it isn't paying attention or even not agreeing to some extent. It's about weighing pros and cons and what is more important.

I have to ask. Ignoring potential, has anyone honestly seen them abused in real play? In all my games whenever anything came up, it was no more than a pause to gather my brain and decide how to cut around. I had an odd response to a description of something that was also working as a poison effect. I just stopped describing. It was the work of like 5 seconds and no mechanics were even touched. Heck some crit rolls have taken more time to work with.

[Beelzebub1111]

I have to ask. Ignoring potential, has anyone honestly seen them abused in real play? In all my games whenever anything came up, it was no more than a pause to gather my brain and decide how to cut around. I had an odd response to a description of something that was also working as a poison effect. I just stopped describing. It was the work of like 5 seconds and no mechanics were even touched. Heck some crit rolls have taken more time to work with.

Personally? No, I have an anecdote from a friend who DMed for store games, but that's not really the point. Just as anecdotes aren't evidence, a lack of them isn't either.

Look at it this way: If a law on the books could be abused, leaves the door open for it being abused. If there were a law that that the government can seize your home for any reason it deems necessary with no explication or compensation, just because the government didn't do that doesn't make that law fine to be on the books. (I am being hyperbolic and not equating these things, but I am giving an example of similar logic)

[kyoryu]

Personally? No, I have an anecdote from a friend who DMed for store games, but that's not really the point. Just as anecdotes aren't evidence, a lack of them isn't either.

Look at it this way: If a law on the books could be abused, leaves the door open for it being abused. If there were a law that that the government can seize your home for any reason it deems necessary with no explication or compensation, just because the government didn't do that doesn't make that law fine to be on the books. (I am being hyperbolic and not equating these things, but I am giving an example of similar logic)

We get it. We just don't think it's a problem.

The main reason being that the law is the law, and really the only recourse is a constitutional challenge, and that's a crapshoot and difficult. So, yeah, with laws it makes a lot of sense to ensure that there aren't abusable loopholes.

That's not the case in a tabletop roleplaying game. There's the whole "table" and "GM" that are involved.

So, on the chance that someone is abusing the X-Card, I'll just talk to them. If I think it's in good faith, I'll tell them that we need to figure out the trigger, or it just might not be the game for them. If I don't think it's in good faith (and if that's the case I'll act much faster), then I'll just tell them it's not acceptable, and that while they're welcome at the table, the behavior isn't.

It's easy enough.

So, yeah. Everyone gets what you're saying. We just don't agree that it's an issue, as we don't see "if the rules say someone can be abusive they can be abusive" as an issue, as the general rule of "don't be a jerkface" trumps that.

When I said earlier I have no interest in rules/etc. that are written to prevent jerkface behavior, I was explicitly rejecting this line of logic.

[Beelzebub1111]

I know you disagree. That's why I said it's up to the individual GMs to determine whether a risk of abuse is worth using them or not. If I'm gaming with people, then part of our social contract is that if there is a problem I expect you to be upfront an honest with me about the problem and that we can work through a solution together. At my tables, a tool that circumvents that communication is not worth the effort to establish and, to my view, is harmful to the kind of games I would like to run.

I'm not saying you shouldn't use them if you feel you need to. I was explaining why I don't need something to have happened to me personally to see a potential for abuse. Sometimes the potential is enough.