@Pyrephox said in X-Cards:
@Roz True story. He was a work friend invited by another player, and was obnoxious the whole session, culminating in deciding that his PC had decided that nothing that was happening was real (it was a portal fantasy 'normal world characters end up in fantasy world' - I WAS FOURTEEN OKAY?? scenario) so he'd naturally start raping the women he met.
That said: portal fantasy is a wonderful genre and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. My current 5e game is not a portal fantasy, but I have played in and run several of them, and I always think it's fun inasmuch as the characters have every IC excuse for being as unfamiliar with your newly-concocted world as the players themselves are.
On the topic at hand, though? Honestly, there are times where an X-Card would've been nice even in my old tabletop group where everyone involved had known each other for years.
At one point, the person GM'ing concocted a world shift (i.e., we were in this world and it started to change, a'la magic coming back and forgotten legends being rediscovered) around our (player) phobias. Which could have been very interesting, mind you, if it had just danced along the edges, using it to make for a little bit of psychological discomfort!
But it ended up pushing those phobias a little too hard but no one said anything—not wanting to be the one who ruined the game—until one player finally hit a wall and said bluntly either we needed a new campaign or she needed a new tabletop group. Having an X-Card to raise when we started to cross that boundary from 'a thematic element that introduces unease' to 'yeah I am actively no longer enjoying this' might've let the campaign redirect before it veered too far into that territory.
(To his credit, when he then realized players were getting not just that 'edge of unease' he was aiming for but actively squick/yuck/discomfort, the GM promptly went, "Alright, this obviously didn't work as I'd hoped, I'm really sorry, let's flip to one of the other GMs for a bit and I'll come up with a new campaign for my rotation in the meantime." And his eventual replacement one was one of my favorite setups we ever played in that group—maybe of all my tabletop experiences.)