Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online)
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@Ganymede The stuff I set up was on the wiki, on somebody's page, in one of the little collapse sections. (Like BITN had, pretty much, if you remember those.)
It just also was piped to the game, so you could check it for a specific character from on-game or on-wiki.
You could also browse subjects themselves on the wiki, so a scene runner looking for ideas of what players presently active on the game were into, and could choose something with a lot of interest when crafting their plots. I never got around to 'pull the generic subject lists to the game' side, since that was way more complicated, but it could certainly be done.
Oh fucking well.
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@surreality said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):
The stuff I set up was on the wiki, on somebody's page, in one of the little collapse sections. (Like BITN had, pretty much, if you remember those.)
I get that, sure. But that's not what I think @Thenomain is getting after. Unless I'm reading things incorrectly, we're discussing how to best indicate discomfort in a scene, not before a scene begins.
RP Prefs tell me, as an ST, where not to go, as long as that's clear. RP Prefs can also tell me what sort of RP you like. But suppose you indicate that you're not into Rape RP, and we RP together, and my PC starts talking about her past of underage prostitution and sexual assault, and something triggers. I respected your RP Prefs to the best of my ability, but RP steered in an unanticipated direction. And I presume, at this point, you'll tell me to stop, which I would naturally do.
RP Prefs are a fine tool to have, but sometimes stuff happens. At that point, a stoplight system could be employed, but then, why not just speak up and say 'whoooooa, no, let's not go there'? And if that's something which one would do, why not do it under all circumstances, and do away with RP Prefs or other tools altogether?
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@Ganymede Prefs of the kind described (even in +kinks code on Shang, which allows for notes) handle the 'lines and veils' aspect quite well: it's a list people can establish and adapt as needed to be used as a reference.
That's one piece; the stoplight/ftb aspect described after is a different piece entirely, and addresses in-scene communication.
We're describing two very different things and I have not suggested that one can -- or even should -- replace the other.
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I will say a few things. They are not meant to be ONE WAY IS CORRECT AND YOU OTHERS ARE WRONG, but I think they're valuable considerations as to why people would consider developing tools such as this.
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Having tools like this indicates overall to the playerbase that consideration of player comfort is a priority on the game. Yes, obviously there are a lot of ways to indicate this, including firm policy and whatnot, but I'd actually say that a game basically going, "We care enough about helping people to work together to make sure everyone's comfortable and enjoying their time to actually invest some time coding to facilitate that," could be very reassuring and set up a pretty strong foundation for a game's attitude towards the subject. Especially because there have been plenty of games over the years where this attitude is not the case.
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RP Prefs or whatever seem to me to have value in that they help people avoid -- or at least minimize -- having to deal with the abrupt sensation of being confronted with something you really, really don't want to be. It's very different being able to have an easy tool to make someone go, "Oh, sure, I'll steer clear of X topic around this person," then have X topic come up and have the other person throw down the red flag as it were. (Or, if it's possible, sometimes there are topics that people would just like warning leading up to them and then they're fine. That's also a thing.) I think RP Prefs accomplishes something similar but also different than in-the-moment communication.
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I myself have a bad habit of getting frustrated when other players don't find it as easy as I do to broach things OOCly. Yeah, I do think there's a sort of fundamental point when you have to be like, "You need to be able to discuss things OOCly sometimes, adult to adult." But I think it's discounting how giving people tools can help make it easier to start that conversation and open it up. Again, this is as much about setting up expectations for how a game intends to address OOC considerations overall as anything else.
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@Roz As you say, there's no one true way to do things. +prefs or stoplights are tools. If you think it's a valuable tool for your game, make it. Maybe people will use it, maybe you'll have wasted your time. Either way it's your game and your time.
The important thing is to have some sort of expectation - whether that's a tool, or a policy, or whatever. The absence of a tool is emphatically not an indication that your game doesn't give a crap about player comfort. It could just be an indication that you don't feel that tool is a good way to address player comfort.
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@Roz You pretty much nailed it, from my perspective, at least.
From where I sit -- and I really don't care if somebody else doesn't feel the same way about it, everyone has their own way of doing stuff -- I feel that anything that can help in regard to this issue is worth my time. And it's for precisely that reason, really: everyone has their own way of doing stuff, and that includes players and their comfort zones re: expressing what their comfort zones even are.
There's also just some stuff it can head off at the pass. Sure, someone may not read. Sure, someone may miss an updated addition or change. Nothing at all is foolproof, even in-scene OOC chat. Even if it prevents 5% of instances of this, and that's probably a pretty lowball estimate, that's still a lot of grief people aren't having to contend with over the lifespan of a game.
Even so, if literally one person writes, "I do not want to RP around the subject of X and do not want it brought up around me in a scene," and another person reads it, and refrains from bringing it up or RPing it around that person, thus sparing everybody the associated angst it might entail to whatever degree, the time spent to put that tool in place has been worthwhile to me personally.
I also just think it's handy. <shrug> People who run scenes are often asking for means of polling the playerbase for topics of interest, and you get two birds with one stone here. If the only practical downside is 'my potentially wasted time', well... uhm, how often do I post here? <shifty-eyes, and shuffles off stage left, whistling innocently to herself>
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As someone who has many projects and non-infinite free time, choosing projects wisely is important. Others will obviously have different priorities.
That said, I will never have such a veils/lines/prefs tool on my game because I feel it foists a level of responsibility onto storytellers that I am not comfortable accepting.
If you put "triggered by spiders" in your profile, and I somehow miss it and I put spiders in my scene, I don't want you coming at me all: "I had this in my prefs profile WTF is the matter with you, you monster - you caused me a RL panic attack."
I refuse to accept responsibility for someone else's mental health while playing a game. We're all adults. I will be considerate and accommodating to the best of my ability when someone raises a concern to me directly, but I'm not comfortable with the impartial and potentially unreliable nature of relying on a tool for such important communication.
Again, that's just me. If someone wants to use such a tool on their game and accept responsibility themselves - that's their business.
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It seems like you are suggesting a coded system that sets a value that the ST is then notified of? has to go and actively check 'stoplights' every few poses? I think relying on players, as @faraday states, to proactively speak up... well, it is the only responsible way. I agree with the hoisting comment.
The main problem with scenes "going bad" for most players comes from the ST trying to throw either tension escalation into the scene (to make it fun) or a plot twist as a shocker or introduction of a new element. Both of those have the potential to be both surprises and shocking moments to players that can push their buttons. I don't think that there are any ways to preserve that 'shock value' for the ST and the story, yet give players heads-up opportunity to stop something before it triggers them.
The Lines and Veils is really the only way to prevent that. The only thing that I've ever seen work, because of the above approaches to STing, has been the X Card approach.
The Door Is Always Open is not that feasible in my opinion, due to the multiplayer, multi-thread sort of gameplay "MMO/Persistent World" fact of MUing.
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A consideration in favor of some sort of such a system:
Recall a time when something that was okay to RP with knowing players was spread to players who had no warning as to the content they were getting into. I myself recall when a scene at The Reach involving sexual assault went from two very engaged players having an intense scene they were enjoying, to it involving other players and then staff without warning. The after effects are ongoing after years, minor now, but still around.
Preventing that may be worth it. It's one of those 5% chance of X100 trauma things over the life of a game.
I have a waggish sense of humor.
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@Misadventure That sort of thing can also be avoided with a little common courtesy. If someone needs a tool to tell them not to blindside someone (anyone!) with a sexual assault plotline, I question whether they're the sort of person who would even bother using the tool in the first place.
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They are the sort of people, it wasn't a plotline it was procedural fallout of a (unplanned, slice of life?) scene, and sure you might prevent it by any number of means.
I feel that relying on player common sense and awareness isn't enough. You do and I am clear on that.
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Sexual assault and sexually-themed violence seems to be a major, recurring issue talked about on WoD game threads here. Yet, are the one genre of game that have the highest levels of Consent, Privacy and Conduct types of rules in place.
The genre is designed from the 10,000-foot-view to be gritty and realistic in a modern-world. Gritty and realistic horror is not the life that most people who have triggers want to live, even as a character.
Like, duh.
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@Rook said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):
Sexual assault and sexually-themed violence seems to be a major, recurring issue talked about on WoD game threads here. Yet, are the one genre of game that have the highest levels of Consent, Privacy and Conduct types of rules in place.
The genre is designed from the 10,000-foot-view to be gritty and realistic in a modern-world. Gritty and realistic horror is not the life that most people who have triggers want to live, even as a character.
Like, duh.
This has to do with the way people's hang-ups, their traumas, and their psychological past and current make-up affects what they enjoy and how they can enjoy it.
Some touchy subject matter below (slurs, mention of rape, etc.)
For example, many men think that a woman who likes to be called "cunt, bitch, slut, whore," or who likes to be slapped or tied up, all during a consensual sex act, is going to be okay being called those things or being smacked or shoved or abused outside of the sex act.
This is so wrong. In general, people compartmentalize and enjoy things within a context. There are even--and I used this example because it's extreme and I thus better gets the point across, and I apologize to anyone it may honestly trigger--there are even women who have been raped in the past, who have rape fantasies now. Does this mean they secretly want to get raped again? No. Does it mean they want their roleplay partner to surprise them with a rape scene? No. Does it mean they want to be watching a TV show or movie and be surprised with a rape scene? No. It means that, when they are alone, some part of their brain and their desire has attuned itself to that fantasy. But it is very important to remember that fantasies are not necessarily what we consciously want, even if we are consciously thinking of them. Just because we fantasize about it does not mean we want it to happen or would even enjoy it at all.
So in a game where the setting and theme are gritty and dangerous and violent, we have policies that protect people who do not want to deal with gritty and dangerous and violent without their consent, much the same way people who enjoy abusive slurs or slapping or whatever during sex only enjoy it when it's consensual.
I edit to add a more mundane example: Some people like playing American Football. In american Football, you get tackled. Lots of people enjoy that aggressive physical contact within that context. Does that mean you get to tackle me on the street because I really like playing American Football? No, fucko, there is a time and a place.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@Coin said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):
Does that mean you get to tackle me on the street because I really like playing American Football? No, fucko, there is a time and a place.
That's right, and it's on the street, bitch.
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This reminds me of "Big Little Lies" on HBO, and how Nicole Kidman's character and her husband have violent sex, and enjoy it. It is abusive, and the show tackles that subject matter head-on. Not something that anyone who has rape triggers could watch, I am sure (it is HBO-graphic, not shying the camera away too much that you don't see the struggle involved).
I am not saying that I don't understand the polices, the need for them, and so on. I made that comment in order to remind people that WoD games are... Dark.
@Misadventure said:
Recall a time when something that was okay to RP with knowing players was spread to players who had no warning as to the content they were getting into. I myself recall when a scene at The Reach involving sexual assault went from two very engaged players having an intense scene they were enjoying, to it involving other players and then staff without warning. The after effects are ongoing after years, minor now, but still around.
The community has changed because of bad apples, bad experiences. I remember back ~1995-2000, when the WoD games that I played on had this same thing happening, but it was kept locked away. It was RPed by consenting adults exploring that facet of the fictional characters' lives, the world, etc. Then Bad Happened, someone got triggered and something exploded on a game, and within a year or two, policies changed, news files became bloated with common sense advice and rules.
It's just an observation. I'm not claiming right or wrong, in any way. Just pointing out that rape is, thematically, one of the least worrisome outcomes to a character when you look at everything that can happen to them. Yet, it is the one parallel between real and fiction that cause the most triggers that I have heard about.
I completely agree with you, @Coin . I think that, as a community, that somehow RP styles and expectations have changed. It seems that consent has become a rarer thing, and people have become very accustomed to giving it up implicitly for scenes/stories/plots without any idea what is coming?
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@faraday I really don't see the lines/veils thing as something as useful in formally run scenes and events as I do in 'downtime' or pick-up RP, which tends to be a lot more improvisational, smaller scale, and involves fewer people at any given time. It's also often what many people do a lot more of with their game time than formally run scenes or events. (Unless everybody is just idling in their rooms and chatting on channels between events, in which case you have bigger problems, really, than any of this stuff.)
Labeling an event with whatever common triggers it is LIKELY to contain is, IMHO, better for that, with the proviso that other things may occur if brought up for some reason by other players in the scene, and a general understanding (or policy because common sense ain't so common) that 'please contain whatever commonly triggery bullshit you plan to do to the stuff on the list k thx' amongst the participants.
At that point, it is on the person who likes those things to show up, or the person who dislikes them to stay away.
It is not my problem as a scene runner if I label a plot 'the endless goldfish massacre full of acres and acres of rancid dead goldfish long past their expiration date and the even ickier sea monsters that love them' and Sally, the goldfish lover who can't abide the very notion of fish dying ever since that tragic forgotten flush incident in kindergarten decides to show up; that's on Sally. The world does not, and should not, revolve around Sally. Sally should get a heads-up so Sally may police her own involvement, to the best of anyone's reasonable ability, so that the entirety of the playerbase is not hostage to only engaging in roleplay that would be fun for Sally, whether Sally shows up or not.
There's obvious additions here: FTB, Door is Always Open. Those two are really nothing new for the hobby. I don't know how I'd code a 'light' system personally; I think that's better left to talking it out or paging a heads-up to the scene runner or dropping OOC to discuss it, as it is fundamentally the same thing anyway. One can simply say 'red/yellow/green', after all, and the meaning would come across, or 'yellow on the goldfish reek, green on the sea monsters that love them, red red red on OH GOD WHAT IS THAT SQUID DOING OVER THERE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!' as needs be.
Oh fucking well.
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@surreality said in Indicating Discomfort in a Scene (online):
At that point, it is on the person who likes those things to show up, or the person who dislikes them to stay away.
But first it was on the person running the scene to label it appropriately - and that's where the 'foisting responsibility' problem I mentioned comes into play.
Also, for better or worse, our society has a very real and well-documented trend where people come to rely on "helpful but unreliable advisories" and then turn around and get pissed off when those advisories are not as reliable or complete as someone thought they should be.
Case in point: we went from "hot coffee is hot, duh" to "maybe we should put a warning message on it just in case" to "OMG you didn't have a warning message on it, you monster, now I'm going to sue you because I burned myself."
(Not saying MU folks are going to sue each other, nor making light of the original McDs coffee lady, who actually had a legit case; I'm just using this as a tangible case in point of the general phenomenon I'm referring to.)
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I'll admit, I've only skimmed this thread.
I like the idea of players being able to indicate their comfortableness with certain possibilities in a non-confrontational manner.
Like others, I'm unsure about how the light system would be implemented on and used in a MU setting. I can very easily see that being one of those things things that gets coded, people use for a while, and then forget about and it sits quiet and forlorn in a corner. I do think that it'd probably get more use in games with a lot of PRPs/STed events though, so maybe worth consideration there?
I also have seen RP-prefs used other places and generally think it's a good thing to have. Although, I wonder if it's too black and white. As an example, I once told another player, "I don't generally TS and would prefer to FTB," which they interpreted as nothing even remotely sexual ever. I wonder if it might be better to handle this like movie ratings? Everyone knows generally what to expect in a movie. If I say my character prefers a PG-13 level of abuse, and an R level of sexuality, that might give people a better idea of when it's time to FTB, or if they're better off avoiding violence altogether with that G-rated char.
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@faraday
A more apt example would be the warning message on your clothes washing machine that tells you not to attempt to wash your children in the machine.Or the sign on the Walmart door that reminds you to turn around and look at your vehicle, you dumbass, because you left your spawn-beasts in the car.
Welcome to society today.
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While the spotlight thing is interesting, the idea you'll ever get MU scene-runners to treat everything they do like a BDSM session in terms of constant consent-checking seems... this will never happen in a million years. So the stoplight thing, interesting as it is someone threw it in an RPG book somewhere, seems very impractical. Never mind the code limitations.
So that kind of leaves us with prefs/kinks/lines/whatever and somewhere to display them. I don't care what you call them really and it's probably a fine idea to include them on a game, but that's never going (and shouldn't) to abdicate people from adult communication and you have to make that clear. Ideally people will check them. But they won't always.
Of course, people may also not be comfortable detailing out everything in these listings for various reasons. I'm not about to put a lot of sex stuff in a profile on a non-sex game even where quite a bit of it happens, even if I'm ok with it in theory, not because I'm embarrassed, but because in my experience this means I'll get hounded for it, in exclusion of other things, even more than the norm.
