We can stop RPG Horror Stories
We are, or at least can be, good friends at the gaming table. When you don’t focus on people, it can be all too easy to fail to be friends around the table. All you need to do to find proof is head over to /r/rpghorrorstories. I don’t believe that this is caused out of malice, though. I think it is caused by just not thinking about it.
Some of us need to be told there are limits
For a long time, I was so focused on “facts, not emotions” that I truly didn’t realize that some topics are taboo for a reason. When you start down a conversation path, related facts just start pouring out. Are we talking about Medieval Europe? Younger Eric would ramble off a lot of statistics about the black plague, how many people died, what plague doctors did, what those fancy bird masks were for, and also a bunch of body horror facts about diseased bodies and the formation of buboes.
Oh, I’m sorry, was everyone eating dinner? Sorry I brought up body horror and details of diseased corpses. It didn’t bother me. It was just facts. But it did bother everyone else.
The same thing can happen when we land at the gaming table. Especially if our table mentions that something is “historically accurate”, it opens the doors for us to start pouring out related stuff in a bad way. So here we go. I’m going to just list out the stuff that, if you want to include it at your table, you should ask everyone else first.
What not to bring up Without Checking
Racism
Torture/Gore
Sex/Intimacy
Nudity
“Historically Accurate” Gender Roles
Slavery/Treatment of Slaves
Class/Caste Tensions
Some topics are OK at Some Tables!
When you ask to bring up some of these topics, your table might be OK with it. In that case, have fun. It is your table, and different topics are fine for different people. We’re often playing rogues and Na’er dowells, so these topics can come up in situations. And if you’ve checked in, then continue.
BUT!
Never Target another Player with this
There isn’t much of an exception for this rule. Being shitty to an NPC is one thing, “seeing” shitty things being done by the scenery to other scenery (one NPC to another) isn’t personally affecting. But There have been studies done that during DnD sessions, we make memories in the same way as if we were taking the actions, or having them done to us. So when you target another player directly with any of the topics above, it can impact the players directly.
So just don’t do it.
Sometimes, we need to be reminded
Obviously, if everyone thought the same way about these topics, we wouldn’t have problems. But we don’t all think the same way, and we do have problems. You play with other people, and the vast vast majority of them aren’t here for any malicious purpose. So just be cautious, and check before you bring in any of these topics.