Sensitivity in gaming

Pyrephox

I'll say:

I've been in gaming for over 20 years, and I've been GMing for a lot of that time. I've dealt with problem players and disruptive players, and plain icky players (like the guy who came to his first session and wanted to have me narrate him raping NPCs when I was a 16 year old girl - this was also his last session).

And I've never really had problems with 'sensitivity'. I've run some absolutely horrific scenes, too. One of my favorites was an series of events that led to a PC having to talk other PCs through cutting his arm off. Even on MU*s, I find that just taking a moment when you're pitching a plot to people to ask what they don't find fun, or if there's anything that they particular do not want to engage with right up front by itself cuts out 90% of problems.

You don't have to aim for 'not offending anyone', because you're never GMing for EVERYONE. But I feel like you should try to respect your actual players as people, and that's all I try to do. I don't want my players to have a bad time - and I don't want to game with people who enshrine 'telling their story' over people having a good time together. I always ask for feedback after running a scene, because that's good GMing. I want to make sure people had fun, I want to know what worked, I want to know what didn't work.

It's not particularly burdensome, because the outcome is something that I very much WANT: I want people to have fun playing in the world I make, or the plot I run. I want all sorts of people to have fun doing that - not everyone, because nothing's going to be for EVERYONE. But for as wide an audience as is appropriate for what I'm doing, and is feasible.

It's not even about 'empathy', primarily. I don't consider a game successful for myself as a GM unless everyone walks away having had a good time. Doesn't mean a perfect game. But if there's something that has actively worked against 'having fun' I want to know about it - for MY sake as much as anyone else. I want to be a good GM. Which means understanding what you're putting out there, and how it's landing. And when it's not landing.

insomniac7809

@arkandel said in Sensitivity in gaming:

On the other hand I can see a gamerunner who makes that 1000 Nights MUSH with the very best intentions getting blasted because they didn't read multiple sources and dissertations to properly depict the staggeringly complex politics, racial tensions and socio-economic issues of the time so that the wrong people are depicted as villainous. Hell, if someone perceives it that way and suddenly the gamerunner is being portrayed as wildly racist on MSB.

So. I mean.

I get what you're saying, but I think the idea that someone is going to get blasted for not fully integrating the complexities of the socioeconomic structure of the Abbasid Caliphate into their 1001 Arabian Nights-themed fantasy setting is overblown.

Like, maybe someone somewhere might write that up as a shitty take, but I think most people are more than happy to accept a simplified version of the real world for fiction and playability. (Hell, I've spent years as the guy saying that if I need to read an ethnography to start chargen, I probably just won't. Having simple hooks/deals to start getting into play is a good thing!)

I think that, much more likely, complaints would come if the setting has less to do with Arabian history, or even Arabian fiction or folklore, than it does with racist European stereotypes about exotic slave girls and malicious, effete nobles strangling each other with silk rope.

I get that people might want to run something other than fictionalized modern-day New England or Middle Ages Europe pastiche, but if the setting doesn't interest you enough to learn more than the most theme park stereotype version of the historical inspiration, why would you want to run a game in that setting?

@derp said in Sensitivity in gaming:

I mean, I get that in a sort-of general principle way? But like -- I'm not sure that that's a great idea either. That would be like saying 'an American' gets to decide whether Squidbillies is a fantasy comedy based on specific tropes/stereotypes or a horrible slander against Appalachian persons.

I mean, there is something to be said about how lower-income white people are the last acceptable target of mockery, and one would hope that someone writing about Appalachian characters would have more knowledge or experience of their subject to draw on than having heard jokes about toothless cousin-fuckers.

I think the "who decides" question is just framing it under the idea that the goal is to never upset anyone ever with anything, but usually what the people talking about sensitivity readers are saying isn't that at all.

Not every American is going to be an expert on every American culture group or agree on every point about what is or isn't offensive. I do feel like an American living abroad could probably tell the difference between something that relates to Americans and something that's based off of racist media based off of shitty stereotypes about Americans. That's really all most talk of sensitivity readers is about; helping people sort out the difference between what they know about other cultures, and what's junk they got from white people imitating other white people making caricatures. Not "how can I avoid offending anyone ever," more "is this talking about Asian people like Ronny Chieng or am I doing Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's."

Ultimately, the people who get to decide what is 'too much' are the consumers of the media, based on their own tastes and preferences as social mores change. People can certainly be advocates for change, but I'm not sure that anyone gets to be "the arbiter of how much is too much" when it comes to things built on, ultimately, stereotypes, whether accurate or not.
Accuracy certainly isn't the point most of the time, and the offensive nature of something is so subjective as to be almost a not-helpful metric.

Well, yes. Any sort of creative work is always going to be a conversation between artist and audience, and a collaborative creation is going to involve a communication between the creators.

The answer to "how much is too much" is always all of the creators and all of the audience, and yes, they're going to disagree. People are allowed to like it. People are allowed to dislike it. People are allowed to be offended. (There's a good chance some people were meant to be offended.) People are allowed to make shitty, CHUDdy YouTube videos whining about pronouns and upload them to trick reasonable people into thinking they're making a salient point.

This general process is what finding an audience is. And just by that metric, one of the things a creator should consider is who they want to appeal to. Or, since a lot of the fundamental draws of a lot of work are near universal, how broadly they want to appeal. The latest Wulfenstein games, for instance, aren't going to hold much appeal to Nazis, because one of the selling points of the Wulfenstein games is the chance to sneak up behind a Nazi at the toilet and drown him in his own piss. (Also known as "having some wholesome fun for the whole family.") The work is fairly hostile to Nazis.

Now, TTRPGs were, for a fairly long time, designed for by and for an audience of white men. (The MU* scene has been a lot more gender-balanced, in my experience, which might be an interesting topic to get into.) That doesn't mean it was anything like impossible for women to enjoy RPGs, plenty of them always have, but plenty of others have been turned away by material that presents women entirely in terms of how they relate to men. When the female gender is represented, essentially, by adolescent wank fantasy, that is often taken as hostile to women. When RPG designers, especially in the nineties, made conscious efforts to be more inclusive in their writing, the balance of the hobby had some major shifts. Avoiding making a work hostile to people outside of your culture is only a good thing for finding an audience.

On top of that, I will go so far as to say that people have a responsibility to avoid spreading harmful ideas with their work. You Are Not Immune to Propaganda and all. Not that a creator should be pouring over every passage to ensure that it encourages the development of proper moral values, but people do, in fact, take ideas and attitudes from media they consume, especially on topics they have no personal experience with (see: how many people think you get one phone call from jail, something that was literally just made up). So while I don't think that, say, anyone is going to really make any life choices because of how WotC presented the Vistani in Curse of Strahd, I do think that presenting an obvious expy of the Romani as a bunch of magical criminal drunks serves to strengthen negative attitudes and stereotypes about a real group of people, and it was irresponsible of them to do it.

Ganymede

@insomniac7809 said in Sensitivity in gaming:

Now, TTRPGs were, for a fairly long time, designed for by and for an audience of white men. (The MU* scene has been a lot more gender-balanced, in my experience, which might be an interesting topic to get into.)

Now this is a good talking point.

I am of the unsupported opinion that the MUSH scene is far more gender-balanced than the TTRPG world. Like, far more balanced. I would lay a wager that there are more women and LGBTQ+ folks playing on MUSHes than cis-hetero-men. I'd lay a heavy wager on that.

Why? I think it's fairly easy to figure out.

To me, this is why policing is so very important. Like, way more important than I ever thought it would be. I can honestly say that of my near 25 years playing the past decade has been the most enjoyable. It's not because I have abandoned World of Darkness games -- okay, that may be part of it? -- but it is because the people that I have run into have taught me so much about ... well, everything.

It's important to me that LGBTQ+ folks have a place to be LGBTQ+ without fear. It's important that women aren't stalked or harassed on these games. I may be one of the toughest old birds out there when it comes to bullshit but that does not mean everyone is or should be. On this board, I'm happy to talk and share with people with divergent views from mine because I know I'll learn something new along the way, no matter how dry, acerbic, and condescending I am.

Gaming is good. It's really good. And to keep it that way, taking an extra step towards making the hobby better for others? That's a good thing.

insomniac7809

@ganymede said in Sensitivity in gaming:

@insomniac7809

As an amateur humorist, I appreciate your take on this.

{...]
Anyhow, yeah. Sensitivity is important. Satire and social criticism is good if you're clearly punching up and not spiking down on the oppressed at the same time.

(Double posting because I started writing my last post, wandered off, the posts didn't load, and I missed this one. Unless someone else posted while I was typing this up and following your links, in which case it isn't a double post.)
(ADDED BEFORE SUBMITTING: As long as it wound up taking me to write this out, it seems likely someone did, but I'm not checking.)

Yeah, it's a thorny issue all around.

Even beyond the issue of how someone feels around the rest of his other work, someone can be solid on a topic they're comfortable on and misstep when they branch out. I've had some personal experience with black coworkers who were very thoughtful and considered on race relations topics, more... iffy when it came to stuff with women, and, uh, let's say struggling when it came to LBGTQ issues. (A couple stockroom conversations I walked in on between my gay and straight black coworkers had me announcing "if HR asks I wasn't here for any of this.")

I definitely agree that the line between "observation" and "stereotype" can be a tricky one. Hell, that job was a shoe store, I worked there for eight years. For most of the time I was the only straight guy who worked outside of the stockroom. I'd point that out for a laugh. ("I thought it was a little strange, and then I said it out loud and heard myself.") Obviously the joke was based on stereotypes, that working at a shoe store mostly appealed to gay men and women. Is it harmful to joke about? I mean, I still think it's funny, I hope it isn't. How many people in creative/ theater/ RP spaces I've moved in are queer or neurodivergent, I think that can be a point to make as long as I'm not making them the butt of the joke.

So, like. Out of the linked routines, "Don't Ask, Don't Tuck" was... I mean, I don't know that it was hateful or anything, but it seemed pretty lazy and frankly not very funny. The one about Jenner, though, that one I'd say is "irresponsible" in the same sense that I used in my above post. The basis of the joke is pretty much the idea that people can be turned queer if they (or, say, their parents) aren't careful about their behavior or surroundings. It's a real idea that causes real harm. Which doesn't mean it's not an idea that can be joked about, but I do think that making it the punchline is a shitty thing to do. No one's really going to get the idea from a SNL routine, but it can still reinforce the attitude that it's true.

And, of course, I'm cis, so this is just my thoughts and take. If the "don't ask, don't tuck" joke is going to be taken worse than I think it would, I don't think I'm the person to say. Not that every trans person is, or can be, the definitive authority--hell, in this post I used the -Q on LGBT and used the word "queer" to refer to non-cishet, and there's definitely some disagreement on whether or not that's still a word that counts as a slur. It's true that you can't please everyone, y'know? But a given trans person probably has a better idea than I do about whether the joke goes beyond the pale. (Fun fact: "beyond the pale" is a reference to the inhuman savagery of the Irish. See, "the pale" is an archaic term for a wall, like the ones set up around the English fortifications.)

So, all that said, people are going to have their opinions but usually I think the concerns about being cast eternally into the darkness of Cancellation for a single misstep are taken pretty far. (It wasn't tasteless jokes that got Louis CK on a lot of people's shitlist, it was years of using his position of power to make women watch him masturbate.) Most of the time, people do seem to get a lot of chances to do better, and the real backlash doesn't start to come until they octuple down and treat every "could you not" as a dare to take it further. People were pointing out Rowling's tendency to like or boost transphobic material on social media for years before she masked-off with her TERF views.

Not to say there aren't cases of people digging up material from years back, or making it up wholecloth, to smear people they dislike, whether out of some vendetta or a sincere belief that the person they're going after should be deplatformed. (Or one leading to the other.) And, unfortunately, small or independent creators are a lot more vulnerable to this than the people whose views have a lot more reach. I could say this isn't any different from other ways people have organized socially to silence people they dislike, and it would be true, but it does feel insufficient. People shouldn't do this, and they definitely shouldn't brigade or harass based on this. I wish I could say something better about this.

...Christ, this is a lot of words to talk about how there's a lot going on with all this and I don't have great answers. I could've actually been writing something. I hope someone gets something out of all this.

(Also, a bit of a "well technically:" there's plenty to criticize Democrats over as far as LGBT advocacy, but (and I realize this is one of those "anything before 'but' doesn't actually count" things, but I do think it's significant (recursion!)) while DADT banned openly gay servicemembers, before its passage the US military banned gay members from serving at all. "They asked, I lied," as a veteran professor of mine put it (theater class, natch). There wasn't enough support for a full repeal of the ban on gay servicemembers under Clinton, so while DADT was homophobic, it was a faltering, clumsy step toward gay rights, not against them.)

GreenFlashlight

@insomniac7809 said in Sensitivity in gaming:

So, all that said, people are going to have their opinions but usually I think the concerns about being cast eternally into the darkness of Cancellation for a single misstep are taken pretty far. (It wasn't tasteless jokes that got Louis CK on a lot of people's shitlist, it was years of using his position of power to make women watch him masturbate.)

Reminder for context that Louis CK is not canceled. Despite everything he's done, he was greeted with a standing ovation when he returned to standup barely a year later, and he's currently in the middle of a sold-out international tour.

I mention this to explain why I have absolutely no patience with anyone who complains about being "canceled," because it never means what they pretend it means. It means they think they're so special it's unjust for them to suffer consequences when they spend a lifetime being shitty to people.

Ganymede

@greenflashlight said in Sensitivity in gaming:

I mention this to explain why I have absolutely no patience with anyone who complains about being "canceled," because it never means what they pretend it means.

This.

Like, for real, Louis CK's last special was hot garbage. My partner and I sort of looked at each other, like we were confused as to why he stopped being funny.

But we knew why.

insomniac7809

(Okay it was YOU who interrupted my double posts responding to you)
@ganymede said in Sensitivity in gaming:

@insomniac7809 said in Sensitivity in gaming:

Now, TTRPGs were, for a fairly long time, designed for by and for an audience of white men. (The MU* scene has been a lot more gender-balanced, in my experience, which might be an interesting topic to get into.)

Now this is a good talking point.

I am of the unsupported opinion that the MUSH scene is far more gender-balanced than the TTRPG world. Like, far more balanced. I would lay a wager that there are more women and LGBTQ+ folks playing on MUSHes than cis-hetero-men. I'd lay a heavy wager on that.

Why? I think it's fairly easy to figure out.

Yeah? I think it's really interesting, actually. @Aria and I met on an online game, but it was a JavaChat game hosted on White Wolf's website, with a very different 'channel' into the game that the MUSH scene, and the playerbase was predominately (not overwhelmingly) male. To the point that the sarcastic comments about crossplaying was almost exclusively discussing lesbians walking around in catsuits and negligee, rather than Yaoi prettyboys. I've wondered if women are the majority in the MU* games because they tend to come from freeform text RP, rather than the wargame scene.

...unless you mean that the TTRPG scene tends to be male-dominated because it's unwelcoming to women, in which case, yeah, depressingly obvious. I do think it's made a lot of headway since the days when @Aria was basically offered free gaming space in a game store if she'd run "talk to a live girl" games to draw business, but yeah.

To me, this is why policing is so very important. Like, way more important than I ever thought it would be. I can honestly say that of my near 25 years playing the past decade has been the most enjoyable. It's not because I have abandoned World of Darkness games -- okay, that may be part of it? -- but it is because the people that I have run into have taught me so much about ... well, everything.

It's important to me that LGBTQ+ folks have a place to be LGBTQ+ without fear. It's important that women aren't stalked or harassed on these games. I may be one of the toughest old birds out there when it comes to bullshit but that does not mean everyone is or should be. On this board, I'm happy to talk and share with people with divergent views from mine because I know I'll learn something new along the way, no matter how dry, acerbic, and condescending I am.

Gaming is good. It's really good. And to keep it that way, taking an extra step towards making the hobby better for others? That's a good thing.

It is. Gaming is good. And the chance to meet people through gaming is also good. In 2021 (I said "2020" above, it's been a month you'd think I'd get that) the ability to meet people from literally anywhere in the world is better than it's been in any time in human history, and that's a really, really good thing.

Which is why--besides the "irresponsible" bit I said above, which I do stand by--I do think it's important to be careful with material depicting other people and cultures. If someone comes into what is, mostly, a "men's space" or a "white space" and sees that they're represented as an ugly caricature of a person, I don't blame them if their response is "fuck this like the gold medalist fucklympian at the 2021 Fuckistan Fucklympics." So they lose gaming, and we lose someone who could be part of our thing and maybe give us some new perspective. Everyone loses.

***tangential, sexual assault***

click to show

So, as these sorts of spaces start to open up beyond the groups that have dominated them, it can be tricky for some of us to find the boundaries. And sure, sometimes people are going to place their boundaries in a place that's not reasonable, at least for the social circle. People do that. But, it's so very, very often the case that when some of us think that "this was always fine before, suddenly this is a problem," it's more accurately "this was always a problem for a whole lot of people, I just didn't have to hear about it." That's really what so much of the whole thing is with "sensitivity readers" and the like, listening to people and behaving in a way that considers others. Like any social interaction.

People mentioned how a lot of the sex comedies in the nineties would be unacceptable these days. (Molly Ringwald wrote a while ago on watching Breakfast Club with her granddaughter and seeing herself being the target of all that adorable sexual assault by the guy she falls in love with at the end.) There's been a lot of pushes toward inclusivity in SF writing and video games, making them less of a space by and for cishet white guys. And then we've been getting the backlash, with people trying to make SFF and video games stay men's spaces.

That's why I was quite so vitriolic about the video linked at the start of this discussion. I do think it's a discussion worth having (God, I hope it is, or this would be a hell of a way to spend my Thursday afternoon) even if I've made my stance fairly clear (God, I hope this all makes some kind of sense). The channel, though, is part of a whole internet ecosystem of gamer guys who take any video game protagonist who isn't a generically-rugged brown-haired guy in his thirties or any female character that doesn't give them a half chub as soon as she juggles onto the screen as a personal attack and proof that gaming is being ruined by SJWs. Even though it actually doesn't hurt them at all if women are made more welcome as gamers. Anyone capable of uploading a video about how making Tifa's tits smaller is Orwellian thought policing has access to infinite CGI titties at any waking moment of their lives. They're mad that they aren't being exclusively catered to.

@greenflashlight said in Sensitivity in gaming:

Reminder for context that Louis CK is not canceled. Despite everything he's done, he was greeted with a standing ovation when he returned to standup barely a year later, and he's currently in the middle of a sold-out international tour.

I mention this to explain why I have absolutely no patience with anyone who complains about being "canceled," because it never means what they pretend it means. It means they think they're so special it's unjust for them to suffer consequences when they spend a lifetime being shitty to people.

Oh, absolutely. I kind of glossed over this in my rambling, but I did say that the worst offenders with the widest reach are the ones who suffer least from people trying to hold them accountable. CK is on shitlists for being an actual sexual predator, not for anything in his routines, and as you say he is not "cancelled" in any meaningful sense.

As I said, the only people who really seem to be subjected to "cancelling" are small creators, and mostly the ones who are working in a more "social justice" space, where that sort of reputation can actually hurt them. (Thinking of stuff like requires_hate's mobs back when.) People who are willing can make being "cancelled" a YouTube career.

Other than that... the only real "cancelation" I can think of was the ~~Dixie~~ Chicks.

Ominous

@insomniac7809 said in Sensitivity in gaming:

@derp said in Sensitivity in gaming:

I mean, I get that in a sort-of general principle way? But like -- I'm not sure that that's a great idea either. That would be like saying 'an American' gets to decide whether Squidbillies is a fantasy comedy based on specific tropes/stereotypes or a horrible slander against Appalachian persons.

I mean, there is something to be said about how lower-income white people are the last acceptable target of mockery, and one would hope that someone writing about Appalachian characters would have more knowledge or experience of their subject to draw on than having heard jokes about toothless cousin-fuckers.

As a proud Appalachian who is related to the McCoys of the Hatfields and McCoys, I take offense at the stereotype that we are toothless and can proudly state that I have all of my teeth aside from my wisdom teeth.

Ganymede

@insomniac7809 said in Sensitivity in gaming:

(Molly Ringwald wrote a while ago on watching Breakfast Club with her granddaughter and seeing herself being the target of all that adorable sexual assault by the guy she falls in love with at the end.)

You mean Sixteen Candles, right?

Regarding why I believe there are more people from traditionally-oppressed minorities in the MUSH world is because it can give players a sense of control and power that they would not ordinarily have in the real world. I have heard stories of the violence some people have suffered because of who they are, and how they enjoy coming online to lose themselves because they can explore their thoughts, feelings, and preferences in relative safety. Being a very privileged person, I can only imagine how it might feel like to be living in a rural community in fear of your life because of who you are, only to find an outlet where no one knows who you are, where you live, and only really cares that you're there to play pretend with them.

I think it is wise to remember the power of playing fantasy. It may not mean that much to everyone, but I imagine it is very important to people who do not feel that they can truly express themselves in their lives. I enjoy playing characters with darker backgrounds or drives because my real life is very different than that. And while it is not real -- it's a simulation at best -- playing characters like Clarice and Piccola have given me the opportunity to research, explore, and consider closely the mental trauma I am lucky not to have.

GreenFlashlight

@insomniac7809 said in Sensitivity in gaming:

Oh, absolutely. I kind of glossed over this in my rambling, but I did say that the worst offenders with the widest reach are the ones who suffer least from people trying to hold them accountable.

Sure. My intent was to agree with and expand on your point, not to correct it. I have no argument with anything you said.

Derp

@ominous said in Sensitivity in gaming:

@insomniac7809 said in Sensitivity in gaming:

@derp said in Sensitivity in gaming:

I mean, I get that in a sort-of general principle way? But like -- I'm not sure that that's a great idea either. That would be like saying 'an American' gets to decide whether Squidbillies is a fantasy comedy based on specific tropes/stereotypes or a horrible slander against Appalachian persons.

I mean, there is something to be said about how lower-income white people are the last acceptable target of mockery, and one would hope that someone writing about Appalachian characters would have more knowledge or experience of their subject to draw on than having heard jokes about toothless cousin-fuckers.

As a proud Appalachian who is related to the McCoys of the Hatfields and McCoys, I take offense at the stereotype that we are toothless and can proudly state that I have all of my teeth aside from my wisdom teeth.

ISWYDT and I love it.

Tinuviel

If a story is so interconnected with a person's trigger that removing or altering that facet to accommodate will require a great deal of effort to tailor? Then that person is responsible for bowing out.

If a trigger comes up but isn't vital in terms of telling the story or it can be altered sufficiently to make no story difference while also accommodating the player in question? Then it's up to the GM to do that if they want, while being aware that not doing so is a teensy bit of a dick move.

Regardless, I do agree that plots, events, and the like should have some nature of trigger warning. Like a film. It's not my responsibility to tell the cinema that I'm triggered by X, it's the cinema's job (by law or regulation in most places) to tell me what I can expect. The same should go for plots and events.

hedgehog

@ganymede

Nope. Breakfast Club. Like, when Bender crawls under the table and breathes (? might have actually involved more, but it cuts away) on Claire's mons/pubis through her underpants and skirt?

https://youtu.be/7OFROViP0J0

Ganymede

@hedgehog

Conceded.

Lotherio

@ganymede said in Sensitivity in gaming:

@hedgehog

Conceded.

The opinion piece she wrote was in reference to the Bender scene ... but it was weirdo John Hughes fixation with her that is creepy AF and the 16 candles parts are just as weird. I've managed to show and explain wrongness in Breakfast Club and 16 Candles to my daughters, but can't even get into his Weird Science with them.

80s in general is weird ass misogynistic film noir (continued from the 70s). It includes a Disney classic, which is also Michael J Fox's feature role as runaway misguided younger brother, in Midnight Madness. This Disney piece includes a boy using a supposed public telescope at Griffith Observatory to watch some lady undressing in the hills saying he's looking at Venus' two moons that are coming out tonight or some such (not full nudity but underwear-clad lady is shown) and a trip to a Pabst Blue Ribbon brewery where a guy on the 'jock' team leaps into a vat and is pulled out completely inebriated by his frat brothers. Other slightly ribald jokes abound, it also features nerds on mopeds led by Eddie Deezen (nerd boy voice/motion capture guy in Polar Express) and Paul Ruebens (Pee Wee Herman) at the end of his 70s cameo's as the quarter jockey at in the arcade scenes. 80s movies in my house is me saying these things happened, it doesn't make them right, we've come a ways since and we have a ways to go - like Whoopi's Intro's in Tom and Jerry collections to express inappropriate stereotypes and caricature, what it meant for the voice actress while saying what is wrong about it.

faraday

@tinuviel said in Sensitivity in gaming:

Like a film. It's not my responsibility to tell the cinema that I'm triggered by X, it's the cinema's job (by law or regulation in most places) to tell me what I can expect. The same should go for plots and events.

I agree in principle that providing content warnings like films is a good idea - I said so too. But there are several important limitations to it, which is why I feel it's more of a courtesy than a safety net.

Even the regulated film/TV industry can't agree on how to use content warnings. There are several systems in use in the US alone, and inconsistent application. (What exactly is "graphic" violence? Reasonable people will draw the line differently.)
Since most MUs are effectively TV-MA (mature audiences only), many of the TV-based content warnings would be considered covered by the underlying rating. You don't usually see "suggestive dialogue" or "violence" tags when something is intended for mature audiences to begin with. That leaves you with only a handful of content descriptors, (e.g., rape, graphic violence), which don't cover a lot. There isn't one for "child tragedy" or (to use @Arkandel's example) "underwater horrors".
MUs are improv, amateur events. It's just not the same as a film being reviewed for content tags by committee.

So yes - if you know something is liable to potentially trigger somebody, give them a freaking head's up first. That's just being a decent human being. But I think the film analogy only goes so far, and I don't think it's fair or reasonable to subject GMs/game-runners to the degree of content warning rigor that even professional film industries can't get right.

Tinuviel

@faraday said in Sensitivity in gaming:

But I think the film analogy only goes so far, and I don't think it's fair or reasonable to subject GMs/game-runners to the degree of content warning rigor that even professional film industries can't get right.

Obviously not, it was just an analogy. And it wasn't about the ratings, really.

The point I was making that it is not my responsibility to make everyone aware of everything that could possibly trigger some trauma of mine. It's the GM/storyteller's job to be aware of the content likely to appear in their plots and, if it is particularly graphic, intense, etc. to make people aware of it before they get involved.

How can we be expected to opt-out of things if we don't know it's there?

Kanye Qwest

@greenflashlight said in Sensitivity in gaming:

@insomniac7809 said in Sensitivity in gaming:

So, all that said, people are going to have their opinions but usually I think the concerns about being cast eternally into the darkness of Cancellation for a single misstep are taken pretty far. (It wasn't tasteless jokes that got Louis CK on a lot of people's shitlist, it was years of using his position of power to make women watch him masturbate.)

Reminder for context that Louis CK is not canceled. Despite everything he's done, he was greeted with a standing ovation when he returned to standup barely a year later, and he's currently in the middle of a sold-out international tour.

I mention this to explain why I have absolutely no patience with anyone who complains about being "canceled," because it never means what they pretend it means. It means they think they're so special it's unjust for them to suffer consequences when they spend a lifetime being shitty to people.

AMEN. He was NEVER canceled. After ten years of calling them liars, he admitted he might have goofed a little and then...took a year long vacation. He was still a millionaire. He still is. He returned to standup with a victim persona and got a standing ovation. He's still working in comedy. He's still a millionaire.

He might be dead to ME but he is 100% not canceled, and never was.

Sunny

I think it would be neat to see a game implement a content warning system for plots/events. You'd need a structure for keeping plots that people could access -- runner, duration, signups available, whatever other info the game feels they need (like asych/real time or something) -- and then just a tag system with a list of predefined tags. The goal really wouldn't be to actually get everything into the system; 100% adoption is impossible and undesired (because you still want to allow for spontaneity, I'd think). The goal would be giving people a consistent language to use and creating a cultural expectation that this stuff should be communicated.

eta: like, no, movie ratings wouldn't work for a variety of reasons, but I don't understand why a game could not come up with their own system? Remember, perfect is the enemy of good.

saosmash

@sunny Ares does have a system for tagging warnings but getting people to be consistent is... another... thing. Mostly in my experience this just means we have to tell people not to use warnings for stupid jokes.