Read on Twitter
To preface: I'm not interested in defending hgmo or bliss stage, but the talk around them has me thinking about a question-
"How do we make games about challenging, immoral, or otherwise triggering things 'acceptable'?"
Because I'm not sure there's a satisfying sole answer?
"How do we make games about challenging, immoral, or otherwise triggering things 'acceptable'?"
Because I'm not sure there's a satisfying sole answer?
Something worth talking about in this conversation is that Lee has had notable influence in the development of safety tools and how we talk about them. You'll also notice that their games don't include, say, the x-card. This is by design.
If you've talked safety in tabletop, you've probably seen references to the Luxton Technique or their essay on the matter
https://p-h-lee.dreamwidth.org/30585.html
https://p-h-lee.dreamwidth.org/30585.html
The tldr is that for a number of people, formal tools like the x-card can make a game less safe, including themself
So there's this inherent problem in safety tool design, which is that
1) one size doesn't and *can't* fit all
2) so a game that's "safer" for one person isn't necessarily any help at all for another
1) one size doesn't and *can't* fit all
2) so a game that's "safer" for one person isn't necessarily any help at all for another
A game can be written conscientiously, but there comes a point where it comes into contact with the players and every tool in the world may won't help if they do something to make it unsafe, or if the tools in use aren't accessible to those playing
Consider Bluebeard's Bride. It's a game of feminine horror that restricts your agency in clever ways even as it asks you to gaslight each other. It's a powerful and thoughtful game, but there's no situation in which it's not intense and potentially very fraught
It includes a number of safety tools in the book but even with those I'd hardly call the game "safe"- it's meant to be uncomfortable and disorienting when played well. I've also had incredible experience with it because of that
Or Monsterhearts- a game that's often difficult to talk about because lots of people feel strongly one way or another about the assumed ages of PCs, the presence of sex moves, and how it models attraction via the Turn Someone On move
So what do these games do differently, right or wrong? How do we keep making games that can engage with these sorts of topics, knowing that games writing and design have huge limitations on how safe they can make the actual table?
It's worth mentioning that both these games formally endorse use of tools like lines and veils and the x-card, but I agree with those who've pointed out that they're patches of sorts, and their simple presence doesn't necessarily make a game any better or "more safe"
I don't want the answer to the question to be "just include the safety tool du jour" because that's a transparently hollow answer
I don't really have an answer to all this, but I think it's a necessary conversation to have if we want to keep pushing the medium forward
What are the best practices? How do we develop them? Where do they fall apart?
