Silent Heaven: Small-Town Psychological Horror RPG
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Development thread is now here
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You had me completely up until: "Likewise, the Silent Heaven community exists as a way for players to heal from issues that may be affecting themselves and others. We all need therapy, but not everyone can afford it. By fostering a safe space to explore sensitive issues, we can help each other, and have fun in the process by dipping our toes into some psychological horror."
And then you lost me completely.
Please, do not do this. This isn't snark or MSB slamming, but professional concern from a mental health professional. Please do not set vulnerable people up to think that a game, a HORROR game, is going to be a stand in for therapy. It is not a safe space to explore genuine psychological trauma, it cannot be made to be a safe space without a lot more pre-assessment than any game is going to want to do, more professional support than any game has, and it is not fair nor safe to put other players in the position of supporting other players' unknown mental traumas.
This is a recipe for disaster that can do actual harm to actual people. People should seek out qualified, professional help for their trauma, and seek out games with internet strangers for entertainment and creative outlets only.
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@carma Thank you. And people can find self-reflection and meaning in all sorts of things, including gaming. I'd never deny that. But it's not a process that you're (probably) qualified to facilitate, and if something goes wrong - if something is too raw, or triggers self-harm impulses, you're not in a position to be able to intervene for someone's safety. So it's best not to get involved in that side of things as a game.
But good luck with the game!
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Looks like you have put a lot of thought into this. Best wishes.
I agree people can sort through themselves a bit in games, and community can be helpful for that, but it can also be damaging. Even shouldering as much concern for the mental health of your prospective players as you're doing here (by providing things like a consent checklist and sanitizing the playing field from certain types of nastiness) is a serious burden, and I applaud your good intentions. I'm not planning to play your game but I wish you the best. -
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oh fuck yeah. How did I not know about this?
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Obviously this is your game and you can do whatever you want with it but I'd be very hesitant to include any object that would allow a player to eavesdrop on other people without their consent. I have never seen that work in production where it does not cause major, major issues.
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I'm curious about the reasoning behind only allowing a consent check on one item once a day - a given scene or plot might logically include a number of things which could be no-go areas for someone, so it seems like it'd facilitate cooperation if people could just access or share their full lists so that they can more easily find people of compatible tastes and boundaries.
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@pyrephox said in Silent Heaven: Small-Town Psychological Horror RPG:
I'm curious about the reasoning behind only allowing a consent check on one item once a day - a given scene or plot might logically include a number of things which could be no-go areas for someone, so it seems like it'd facilitate cooperation if people could just access or share their full lists so that they can more easily find people of compatible tastes and boundaries.
Yeah I mean if the purpose of the consent list is to keep people comfortable, then the consent list should just be made publically available. It's just an OOC list? Not sure why it would need to be hidden or anything like that.
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I'll say that I appreciate you laying out exactly what the non 'optional' things in the game are, and wish more games would do that so that people can self-select in or out with full information.
Also, it looks like you've done a LOT of work on this game, and with a heavily coded game, that's difficult to follow through on. Great work!
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@carma I think that eavesdropping has a large tendency to be abused OOCly. I know in Firan, being spied on was something that was routinely used to manipulate people on an OOC level, the whole 'I heard so-and-so saying this about your character'. It was also used as a fear tactic - if you do XYZ on camera, someone will overhear and you could be killed/kicked out/etc! A few years ago on Arx, someone was soft-banned for pretending there was an eavesdropping mechanism and using that to manipulate several people ICly and OOCly, which granted is not entirely the same thing, but I can only imagine what this person would've actually done if there HAD been an eavesdropping ability.
Anything that gives someone control/power over another PC without that PCs consent is opening you up to being abused in a gross/manipulative way, and since they are using game mechanics to do it, people are less likely to report.
As far as the consent list being used to out alts, I really don't think that risk (which I perceive as generally small) to outweigh the benefit of being able to feel OOCly comfortable that my boundaries aren't going to be crossed either intentionally or accidentally.
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@carma "On cam" just means like, IC. Not actual cameras
That being said, it's your game and you should do whatever you want if it is fun for you. I don't know what the eavesdropping mechanism provides if characters can't die, or be kicked out of a group. What is the point of eavesdropping, exactly? To learn someone's IC secrets? What can someone do with those IC secrets?
I always approach game mechanisms by asking how it can be abused, and making sure there are controls in place to prevent that abuse. For an eavesdropping mechanism, I'd make sure there are a lot of OOC controls - like, what is eavesdropped is being system logged so someone can't learn something OOC and then "pretend" they heard it while eavesdropping, etc.
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@carma said in Silent Heaven: Small-Town Psychological Horror RPG:
I'm not sure what to do. I imagine it sounds eye-rolly for me to say but my game will be different!
It's only eye-rolly in the context of 25 years of people saying, "my game will be different" but not actually doing anything different.
As far as the consent list being used to out alts
Out all alts from the get-go.
