Listen to this episode here.
Safety in RPGs and larp is a huge topic, one I’ve wanted to cover on Dice Exploder for a long time, but one I’ve avoided it because it feels hard to approach inside the “pick one mechanic” format of this show. Even more than most mechanics I cover on Dice Exploder, I feel like most safety mechanics are in conversation with each other in both logistical ways—how they compliment each other—but also in the philosophy behind their existence in the first place, how including these mechanics at the table is ideally a statement about how we’d like to treat each other both at the table and away from it. So today we’re gonna name that underlying philosophy and call that our mechanic: “players are more important than the game” is something I hear in conversations around safety all the time, and that’s this episode.
To break it down, I’m joined by Sarah Lynne Bowman. She studies all this professionally, and she has so much to say and to share about how safety tools work in theory and in practice, how no tool can ever guarantee your safety (even if we should still definitely use them), and how building good communities around our games is at least as important to safer play as any individual tool.
Finally, content warning in this episode for mention of sexual assault and emotional abuse in rpg communities. We don’t get deep into any specifics, but they come up.
Further Reading
Your Larp’s Only As Safe As It’s Play Culture by Troels Ken Pedersen
Dice Exploder on accessibility in game design
Creating a Culture of Trust through Safety and Calibration Larp Mechanics by Maury Brown
Larp Design, the book
Bibliography from Sarah Lynne Bowman
Koljonen, Johanna. 2019. “Opt-out and Playstyle Calibration Mechanics.” In Larp Design: Creating Role-play Experiences, edited by Johanna Koljonen, Jaakko Stenros, Anne Serup Grove, Aina D. Skjønsfjell and Elin Nilsen, 235-237. Copenhagen, Denmark: Landsforeningen Bifrost. 3 pages.
Koljonen, Johanna. 2020. “Larp Safety Design Fundamentals.” JARPS: Japanese Journal of Analog Role-Playing Game Studies 1: Emotional and Psychological Safety in TRPGs and Larp (September 21): 3e-19e.
Hugaas, Kjell Hedgard. 2024. “Bleed and Identity: A Conceptual Model of Bleed and How Bleed-Out from Role-Playing Games Can Affect a Player’s Sense of Self.” International Journal of Role-Playing 15 (June): 9-35. https://doi.org/10.33063/ijrp.vi15.323
Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2015. “Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character.” Nordiclarp.org, March 2.
Bowman, Sarah Bowman. 2022. “Safety in Role-playing Games I: Introduction -- Sarah Lynne Bowman.” Transformative Play Initiative, February 4.
Bowman, Sarah Bowman. 2022. “Safety in Role playing Games II: Before the Game -- Sarah Lynne Bowman.” Transformative Play Initiative, February 4.
Bowman, Sarah Bowman. 2022. “Safety in Role playing Games Part III: During the Game -- Sarah Lynne Bowman.” Transformative Play Initiative, February 4.
Bowman, Sarah Bowman. 2022. “Safety in Role playing Games Part IV: After the Game --- Sarah Lynne Bowman.” Transformative Play Initiative, February 4.
Bowman, Sarah Bowman. 2022. “Safety in Role playing Games Part V: Cultivating Safer Communities -- Sarah Lynne Bowman.” Transformative Play Initiative, February 4.
Socials
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.
Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!
Dice Exploder on Patreon
Transcript
Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take one RPG mechanic and check in to see how it's doing. My name is Sam Dun Wald, and my cosst today is Sarah Lynn Bowman.
And this is an episode I've wanted to do for quite a while. Role playing games and safety. It is a huge topic. One I've wanted to cover on Dice Exploder for a long time, But one I've avoided because it feels hard to approach inside the pick one mechanic format of this show. Even more than most of the mechanics I cover on dice explode, I feel like safety mechanics are in conversation with each other in both logistical ways, how they compliment each other at the table, but also in the philosophy behind their existence in the first place. How including these mechanics when we play is ideally a statement about how we'd like to treat each other, both at the table and away from it.
So today we're just gonna break format and cover a bunch of these mechanics all at once as part of Dex Exploder series on larp, but also about RPGs generally. I'm joined by Sarah Lynn Bowman to take a first crack at covering safer play here on the show. Sarah is an academic who studies all this professionally. She's been LARPing and playing RPGs for decades, and she has so much to say and to share about how safety tools work in theory and in practice, how no tool can ever guarantee your safety, even if we should definitely still use them, and how building good communities around our games is at least as important to save or play as any individual tool.
To that last point, if we are gonna pretend we're sticking to format this week, the mechanic we're covering is players are more important than the game. A common philosophy or refrain you hear around safety tools and a safety tool un undo itself by what it signals to people when they hear it.
And speaking of signaling, a quick note before we get started that this episode contains mention of sexual assault and emotional abuse in RPG communities. We don't get really deep into any specifics, but you know. They come up.
Okay. With that, thanks to everyone who Sports Days Exploder on Patreon, and let's get into it. Here is Sarah Lynne Bowman with players are more important than the game and safety tools generally.
Sarah, thanks so much for being on Dice Exploder. It's great to have you.
Sarah: Thank you for having me.
Sam: Yeah. So what are we here to talk about today as far as you understand it?
Sarah: Well, we were gonna talk about LRP safety mechanics and maybe a little bit about calibration as well. I think.
Sam: Yeah I was thinking maybe an interesting place to start here would be with the phrase players are more important than the game.
I feel like this is something that has become a lot more popularized in the past decade, maybe, maybe less. I know I have a weekly story games meetup here in Burbank and something that we say before anyone has even decided what they're playing every week is remember, players are more important than the game.
And I feel like that is such a potential guiding principle for safety mechanics and what we mean when we talk about them, while also kind of being a safety mechanic in and of itself. And I'm curious if you could just sort of unpack what that phrase means exactly to you and maybe what the history of that phrase is.
Sarah: Sure. I, I'm not actually sure where it started, but I was hearing it from Marie Brown and Johanna Koljonen around 2016. also John Stavropoulos. That's really where I felt it bubbling up the most, but it could very well predated that. and it's kind of sad that it's that new.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah: it seems like, duh, like of
course players are more important than the game, but to be honest when I was, doing role playing games, the game was always more important than the players. That didn't mean we didn't care about each other, but, in terms of content, for example if it was justifiable for a GM to rape your character or to sorry.
A trigger warning for that, I should have said but
Sam: I can put it up in the introduction.
Sarah: Great. Yeah. Or to, you know, kill your character, they can just do that because the rules say they can. And similarly with PVP and, and other kinds of, you know, aggressive actions, mind control, things like that. So that's just been so embedded in gaming culture, and because the emphasis has been on conflict resolution mechanics, meaning that there is going to be winners and losers, and these mechanics are there to decide who those people are,
and that's, that's the emphasis of the game. Then anything is really justifiable. And similarly, if there are factions within a setting, then those factions of course, are going to be at odds with one another in various ways, whether it's fighting over resources or status or whatever.
And so, because of that sort of built-in antagonism in a lot of these systems, the assumption is that if you are somehow negatively affected by what's happening, then there's something wrong with you not the game. Like you probably don't belong here. And that's true for people who have accessibility issues, for people, you know, it's often geared towards, sadly enough people from marginalized genders and racial backgrounds who, you know, have probably more of a history of trauma or different kinds of trauma, let's say, than other players.
And so from my perspective as someone who has PTSD it was very difficult for me to be playing this very intense content and not be processing it actively with the group. Like, I couldn't understand why we weren't talking openly about what was very obvious to me, which is that we are bringing ourselves into the game in some way and
some pretty powerful things were happening, and we should probably talk about those things.
But it's taboo to do that, right? Because then you have to own that that part of you is active, or you have to look at this part of you that you think is totally not you. We call that the shadow in
Jungian psychology, right? Like, oh, that's not me. That's the character. And in, in role play theory, we call that alibi. So, you know, I, it wasn't me. I wasn't there. It was the character. To actually have to say, well, maybe there was a piece of me there, or, you know, maybe these two people are actually in love out of character, not just in character or whatever. We didn't have a word for bleed at the time.
and so due to some mental health challenges that I had as a result of playing with my community, I was really kind of an inquiry around, is it me or is it the game? Because there is a, especially in Vampire larp, there, there's this term called IC does not equal OOC.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: And what that means is you shouldn't be upset about anything that happens in character because otherwise you're breaking the social contract. In some way. Right?
And it makes sense in a highly competitive game that if somebody is a spoil sport, then they shouldn't be upset because this is the situation they put themselves in. But at the same time, so a lot of people like me weren't even drawn to vampire for that. We, we weren't there to be playing a highly competitive political game. You know, I
was really interested in exploring what it meant to be immortal and, having love affairs that last for hundreds of years, like, so we were in a totally different, we're in different games in a way. And so how do you navigate that? Right.
Sam: yeah. One other thing that's very important that's context around this, which is the Satanic panic.
Sarah: Um.
Sam: yeah.
Sarah: Because there was all this fear that you know, people were gonna lose themselves in the game and that that was gonna cause suicides and murders and all this stuff there's a defense mechanism that's built into a lot of these cultures that, okay, if you're having any kind of a, you know, mental breakdown or psychological issue, then you don't, you shouldn't be here 'cause the rest of us are fine. Right?
So it, it's sort of an overcorrection in a way to where it's like we don't talk about that at all.
Sam: Yeah, it's it's not the game's problem. It's your problem. Right.
Sarah: and I mean, to a certain degree, no, games are inherently a problem, right? Like if you have the right agreement between your players and the enough trust, you know, there are certainly things that other people might be upset if you role played about, and that you might just have to accept that that might happen. You
know, there's certain themes that are pretty controversial, but the game itself is not necessarily a problem. You know, it's, the problems arise when humans are playing with each other and trying to figure out how to have a shared fantasy world while also navigating all of the complex psychology that we have.
And the social baggage that we bring into to games. And this is, you know, it goes far beyond a game. This is what we're trying to deal with in society in general. Like how do we be inclusive? and that word was not being used at all back when I first started researching. So that's another kind of general shift we're seeing in society towards inclusion, towards safety, towards consent.
You know, and I knew almost nothing about consent when I first started doing this research. So it's a learning process, I think, for all of us to figure out how do we actually navigate that in life and in games? In games it's sort of this microcosm where we get to practice this thing.
Sam: Totally. Yeah.
Okay, so. What might, or what does a culture of play that's more rooted in players are more important than the game look like? Like it feels to me in particular like the goals of that kind of culture have gotta be different from the maybe more competitive implicit goals of the kind of culture that you're describing.
Sarah: You know, it's really interesting because I was recently reading about emergent larp, which is, sort of a hybrid genre of like, we still want our American competitive art, but we also want consent based culture. So
I don't think that they're necessarily. You know, at odds with each other. But I think when there is an emphasis on the outcome of the game being the most important thing and the story continuing regardless of whether or not it's caused harm, then that is the sort of thing that's being called into question.
So it's really more about creating spaces for negotiation.
So it's not about eliminating things necessarily, but rather about discussing as a group is this really cool for all of us to play? And there's various ways to do that. You can have pre-game conversations like Session Zeros in in tabletop, we have workshops and larp. We can have, you know, one-on-one conversations with our coplayers, like, what's the sort of thing that you want to steer away from? What do you wanna play?
Because in LRP you might have a pre-written character. I often have this happen where I have this built in antagonism and I have to contact the person and be like, hey, if you really want this, I will play it, but this is not my jam. So, like, you know, and, but at the same time, you have to also realize the other person has their investment too.
So figuring out how you can kind of hopefully find something that makes you both feel satisfied with the play, it doesn't always work, you know, that's just the way it is.
But, having those kinds of open conversations was not something that I did for, you know, most of my years as a role player before.
Like the fact that you could just openly say, I'm really into romantic play, but just to let you know that I tend to get bleed. So, are you okay with, are you consenting to being in a situation where there might be some sort of romantic feeling developing? Like that was so taboo when I was playing and when I was writing my dissertation.
So that sort of stuff is much more. In the zeitgeist, it's much more talked about. There's articles you can share with people. There's languaging around it. And a lot of that I learned at the Nordic LARP community, the first time I ever went to Knutepunkt, which was in Denmark in 2011,
there was,
Sam: can you, say a little bit more about what Knutepunkt is?
Sarah: sure. So, the Nordic LARP tradition, which is sort of misnamed and there's a lot of reasons for that, but basically Nordic LARP refers to a not all LARPs in the Nordic countries, but rather a small group of avant-garde LARPers who focus primarily on experimentation and, pushing boundaries in a lot of ways, including playing in a very hardcore style, sometimes around themes of oppression or, you know, themes that some people might wanna actually stray away from. There often is no win conditions.
That's not the point. There's no dice, there's no victor that, you know, it's called playing to lose or playing for drama where it's like, you know, if you got to cry the most, then you maybe won the larp. Right.
Sam: Yeah.
Sarah: you know, is not always necessarily my, style either.
But when I went there, just in terms of the level of discourse, The open discussion about safety, I was invited to a workshop where they had this list of things you can do before it was called, it was called de fucking. And the idea was that, of course, we play LARPs to fuck ourselves up, so how do we de fuck ourselves?
Sam: Yeah.
Sarah: And I was just like amazed that there were all these strategies that they were openly talking about pregame, during game, after game. And I was sitting there and there's this guy just very cavalierly said, well of course you fall in love with your coplayers. You get over it in five days. That's just obvious. And I, I just started crying. I burst into tears like five minutes into this workshop because that was not talked about,
you know, so I think a lot of it is just having it, first of all, raising awareness around it and not shaming people totally makes sense if you're upset that somebody killed your character without your consent or, or sprung it on you, or maybe said something to you that felt really personal in game, even though maybe they didn't intend it that way.
Of Of course, there are people that do cause harm intentionally, but most people are not. Most
people are just playing, they're testing boundaries. Maybe they get a little carried away. They push a boundary. And then what do you do? How do you create safety? Or at least the perception of safety. 'cause you can never create safety actually,
which you can create a sense of safety. And then not just if, but when that safety breaks down, so assume that it's gonna break down at some point. How do you then reestablish it and maintain it?
So that's, I think what a culture focused on players are more important than games is interested in. It's like, I wanna make sure that you have a good experience and that I have a good experience.
Not that, that the storyline has to be this one specific thing or the dice tell the story and that's it.
Sam: Yeah, there's several things in what you just said that I want to kind of pick up on. I maybe wanna start with. How to think about like bad actors in relationship to all this. You mentioned that, you know, some people are here to just be assholes or maybe they're not here to be assholes, but they're also not gonna respect the safety tools for whatever reason
and I am coming from a, a tradition that understands you can't design around those people. Like you have to talk to them, or better yet not play with them. And I'm curious from where you're coming from and how do you think about those people and how to navigate them?
Sarah: Well fair warning that I'm considered a bit of a hard liner when it
comes to this. Um, Not as much as my husband, Kjell Hedgard Hugaas, he's very strict about this because we both have heard a lot of stories, I think you're in the right. I mean, if there's some way that you can obviously try to connect with the person and explain to them, Hey, this behavior is coming across a certain way and then that can be changed then great.
But you know, if somebody feels victimized, then do you wanna force that person who feels victimized to be around the person that they felt victimized by? I mean, that's not great.
and so, there's a lot we could talk about with regard to this. But my tendancy is if people, first of all, to have a code of conduct, make it very clear what the rules are of it, and part of that might be, for example, if you're using an X card or in larp maybe it's X arms where you put your arms up and somebody doesn't respect that and they continue to, push that content onto you, then there's a consequence.
maybe that you're not allowed to play with that person for the rest of the game, or maybe you have to leave. You know so the most important thing about a code of conduct is that it's enforceable and that it is enforced. Otherwise, it's mostly meaningless.
That being said, we don't always have to jump to banning somebody, right? There's a
large range of different kinds of, things that could actually serve the group. but the most important thing is that the person who feels harmed. is in agreement with what is decided.
and that's not always where people start.
Sam: yeah, yeah. And the, the main thing I wanted to kind of underline there is like, you're not designing mechanics around those people unless you're talking about a code of conduct as a mechanic, right? Like you're out there, you're talking about how to handle that kind of situation as human beings in conversation, not as game players.
But at the same time, and this is another thing I kind of wanted to touch on here, you're also immediately talking about a code of conduct. You are talking about a, a broader experience design and planning for how to deal with those situations in a really similar way to how you're gonna design an experience, that like designing safety mechanics, is about. D designing the whole community and culture around the community, not just about putting an X card on the table.
Sarah: Exactly. I don't know if you're familiar with the larp design book
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. I've been, I'm about halfway through it right now. I,
Sarah: but the term that Johanna Koan and the other editors, up with is everything is a designable surface.
So Your safety design is not just which mechanics you include, or if you include mechanics. Some games don't, you know,
they decide not to, but at least they're being clear about what their goals are and that they're not gonna use mechanics for this specific reason. And the code of conduct and the way you handle online spaces, the way that you handle flagging. You know, in, in LARPs we have a lot of debate around flagging, which is this practice in which, it happens in different ways. But basically whoever gets chosen for A LRP usually by a lottery of some sort, the list goes out to the other players and they see if there's anybody that they wanna flag.
And there's different types of flags. There's like a flag for like, this person is unsafe. But there's also flags for like, that's my ex. I'd prefer not to have to be in the same game with them, but, you know, I'll step away if necessary, kind of thing. You know, or just, I just don't really enjoy playing with that person. Could you please cast them somewhere else in the larp?
so so unfortunately those things can sometimes get conflated, and that's where some of the critique comes in, is people who feel like they've been you know, excluded, wrongfully. so it's not a perfect practice, but that is a form of design, right?
So then it's like, how do you design the flagging? How do you optimize that? And you iterate upon it and, yeah. So yes, designing the community, absolutely.
Sam: Yeah. Cool.
So, okay. Something you mentioned in there was, the existence of games that aren't going to use safety mechanics and are upfront about that and might have a reason for doing so. And I'm curious what sorts of reasons you've seen for that.
Sarah: Well my husband Shell and I have been writing some theory around this actually. We call it the zones of safety comfort and growth, and
basically. We use like red, yellow, green model just to talk about different zones. Like, so a green zone LRP experience might be kind of a cozy LRP where you're not really expecting anything too challenging to happen.
It doesn't mean that it can't, sometimes
those games can actually be really intense all of a sudden, but it just means that everybody there is kind of agreeing that you're, we're gonna keep it fairly, either light or maybe there's no combat in this space, or whatever. then there's the yellow zone, which is sort of like the, the zone of proximal development, the growth edge. You know, that's the zone I prefer to play in. it's, it is more safety focused and that it's like, it's more important to me that someone doesn't go way past their limit and have a traumatic experience. Which means that some people might have a not as intense experience as a result.
Right. But
that's just, that's just where I prefer to design, especially since our focus is transformative game design. And how are you gonna facilitate this for other people?
Like if you're a therapist running a group, you probably don't wanna go straight into red zone every
time. I don't know. It depends on the group, but I, you know, like it maybe you wanna stay in a zone where they can kind of of maybe judge their own limits a little bit easier. Whereas Red Zone is like pushing right to the edge of the limit. And that limit might be a, a what you might find socially acceptable, or it could be just being totally overstimulated. Like there's people who don't sleep for days at LARPs. I mean, even that is a, is a red zone in a lot of ways because
you're, you're depleting your ability to executively function and emotionally process what's happening in order to have a super intense experience.
So there are games that have less safety mechanics or they have an explicit rule, we're not gonna break character. That used to be the norm, by the way, in a lot of Nordic LARPs. Like, you just don't blur character. You don't stop and have a negotiation like, you know, you
just read each other's body language or whatnot.
Which of course becomes super problematic in groups that have neurodiversity where some people aren't able to read
body language as easily. So there's an assumption there, right? But if everybody in the group decides we're going red and we are agreeing to high risk because maybe we have a high level of trust in this group, maybe we, feel like we can handle our own boundaries very well. We don't need to be checked in on, we don't need to have somebody calibrating with us. Some groups wanna be surprised. That's like part of their play culture. Like they don't wanna
know in advance which you're gonna do. So they, might say, just surprise me. Otherwise it kind of ruins it for that player.
I personally would much prefer the game to be a little ruined and than people actually not harming each other. But you
know, like some people are just, are fine with going there. So this is not a judgment on my part. It can kind of, it come across that way, but it's not at all. It's just these are different zones
there are different players within those kinds of games too.
You might be having a, a community that you're trying to create that's more like a yellow zone of proximal development, but then you have a hardcore player that's taking it in a really intense direction. So then what do you do?
You know, how do you negotiate with that?
Sam: Yeah, totally.
I was thinking about a couple years ago I got back from a big bad con and I was sort of debriefing with my partner on like how the trip had gone. And they were like, man, the thing that you love is emotional skydiving.
And I feel like that's totally right and that the thing that you were talking about is, you know, there actually is sort of an extra thrill to skydiving without a parachute. And like, I don't necessarily want to do that, but I do kind of like get why someone might want to. Even if you know there's an impact at the end of it, probably.
There's also, I think the green zone there is really interesting to me too. I've been reflecting lately on the idea of trying to run a game, like a honey heist, which is if listeners are not familiar a game about being bears, trying to rob honey from Honey Con and cool. It's very light, very cute, fun game and trying to run that with like lines and veils upfront, or like bringing in a sheet that's like, well, let's make sure we don't have any sexual assault in this game.
Like that is immediately really gonna mess up the, like, intended experience of honey. Like in the same way that like, I'm not gonna show up at a party and immediately start talking to someone about sexual assault. Like, I'm not gonna show up to a game of honey heist and start introducing content like that and trying to engage the wrong safety mechanic for the situation. It, the mis mismatch is gonna feel really bad and off-putting to me.
So I, I don't know that that framework feels really useful to me.
Sarah: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I've seen people introduce all sorts of weird stuff in games that have absolutely nothing to do with that thing. So
Espec, especially at conventions, because
you don't have any kind of shared, and you might know people at the table, but oftentimes you don't. And you know. So I, I, I wouldn't necessarily assume, I mean, the X card was created for convention spaces specifically.
I wouldn't necessarily assume that.
Now that being said what you could do is, for example, pull out the consent and safety checklist. That might be a little bit much for a short game, but just you could just very informally say, are there any topics here that are xs for you? You know,
you don't have to necessarily put one out there, or if say like I was personally robbed yesterday, so, please don't steal anything from my character.
Right. So it might, you, you could do, you could model it
in a way that is appropriate to the setting.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. I've come to really love that, this is again from my local Story games meetup, we always introduce the X card at the start of the night also. And the example that has become popularized is if someone names a character Bob and you just broke up with a guy named Bob, then you can like X card that name and keep it out.
And that feels like a really like low stakes but super valid and immediately understandable reason to use the tool that modeling. As you're saying does feel really helpful.
I think you're, you're also much more right about convention play and playing with strangers. Like I I was very much thinking about like sitting down with friends I know fairly well and it super changes as soon as you bring in strangers to the table.
Sarah: Yeah, and I think that's really important. A lot of people have kind of strong opinions about safety mechanics, like, oh, I don't need that.
'cause we all trust each other. In my group it's like. Yeah, not everybody has that. And
um, just because everybody trusts each other doesn't mean harm doesn't happen because
sometimes there are members of the community that leave and maybe they don't tell you why they left. You know, like we call that the survivor bias of some of these communities. So it's like,
yeah, you all, you all trust each other, but it doesn't mean that harm hasn't happened here.
That being said, a lot can be done within a trusting group that can maybe make it less necessary to check in as much, for example, or maybe, you know, if you are super familiar with each other's body language and you can, you know, parse each other that way, then maybe, then you don't necessarily need a verbal check-in,
but I still think the tools are good to have on just in case.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. Well, in my, preference, especially when I'm putting together like a group of people who are already friends but maybe haven't played tabletop games before, is let's like have a safety conversation up top and like talk about these tools and talk about things and, you know, maybe check in on it every once in a while.
But because we have like really existing friendships and existing means of communicating with each other, it's not something that feels as essential to do like every evening in the way that it does feel essential to do every time these story games meetup happens and like a bunch of strangers are coming together to mix and match and how they're gonna play
Sarah: being said, the times when I've felt the most hurt in games has often been with people I know very well. So, having a long relationship with people means that there's a lot of investment
and a lot of, shared history. you know, we were talking about breakups as an example.
When people go
through a breakup, they have all of this long, you know, connection. And so like i wrote a paper on social conflict and bleed years ago and I, interviewed a bunch of people 'cause I was really interested in this question. For example, is this more likely to happen with strangers or people you know very well and people were seeing it happen in communities where the same group were playing different games, for example.
So it's not necessarily an assumption that just because there's trust within a group that their harm won't happen. Sometimes that can be when people really get hurt. So.
Sam: Totally.
So I wanted to ask also about some specific examples and also maybe the practice of designing safety mechanics for a specific game.
Because another experience I feel like that I have had around safety mechanics is they're much easier to use when they feel like they are a organic part of the game that we are playing rather than, and also there's an X card on the table. And not that like, and also there's an X card on the table isn't useful, but, there's a, like,
There's a lrp my friend Ash Kreider made called The Straights are Not Okay. It's about gender reveal party, Midwestern family having family drama. And included in this LRP is the phrase that's how, that's not how I remember it, which you can say to anyone at any time in any conversation to sort of indicate. Hey, we are both inventing fiction right now, but I'm not interested in the version of this fiction that you are inventing. And I would like to change the subject and it feels really easy to deploy because it maps onto that world of a passive aggressive family that's not going to be talking about some things really. Well, it feels like a natural phrase to say.
As opposed to, you know, going off game or out of character to sort of talk about this situation also totally valid, but maybe like a harder social cost to, to get up and actually say that. And I'm curious if that is true in your understanding and experience also, and then how to think about when is it more appropriate to have like a more out of game less embedded kind of mechanic, and how to go ab about trying to find embedded mechanics in the first place.
Sarah: Hmm. Well, first of all, I'd like to ask you, in
that game, did you use that mechanic?
Sam: I I've played that game three times, and I believe I've used that mechanic once over the course of the three play threes.
Sarah: Okay. What about other mechanics? Have you used those during
flight?
Sam: I've often used like the go out of character, put a fist on your head thing or to just say like, off game. The door is always Open is another one that is really prominent in my culture as a play of like, you are always. The door is always open and if you need to go to the bathroom, if you need to just go outside or whatever. I have had experiences like that where I've, I've stepped outta the room.
Sarah: The reason I ask this is because I personally am not a big fan of embedded mechanics.
That's not to say that they're not useful or that some folks Don't prefer them because they definitely do. I think designers like them because they feel more elegant. It doesn't break their design so much. And some players like them because when there's a hard shift in and out of immersion, they have sometimes experienced that unpleasantly
or may have, difficulty engaging again.
Although I would say from my perspective, that is not as common as people make it sound like.
We, we, we shift out of character all the time for little things, right? And You know, we have no problem re re-engaging.
So that being said, if somebody's in the middle of a super intense scene and they get broken out of, I can see how that could be really frustrating, especially if they were about to have a big catharsis or something like that. Um, what I feel is that, first of all, long phrases, people almost never remember all of
the phrase.
Sam: Mm-hmm.
Sarah: So if you're gonna make a custom bespoke mechanic, it should be short and easy to remember. So I'm not sure how I would hack that particular one.
Uh, maybe
Sam: we can leave that example behind. I
Sarah: No, no, it's a good one. It's a, it's a great one. And I, I love hearing about it. this is part of what we're writing about or these philosophies of safety and there's different schools of thought and sometimes we get very passionate when we discuss this
stuff.
I also feel that the more things we add the more difficult it is for players to retain it. So.
There, there's an argument that says, oh, you should have bespoke mechanics for every single game. Well, that means that's a whole other cognitive load. and oftentimes it's used because it's supposed to lessen the cognitive load.
But for me, having to remember a key phrase that's specific to this setting, if I'm overwhelmed, might be harder then using the X card that I've used many times in other games. Right?
So that, so there's pros and cons to all of this. the short answer to that. And I would say that, if you practice, all of these things need to be practiced in workshop. That's, That's,
number A. You can't just say really quickly, oh, this is gonna be our, catchphrase. And then expect people to necessarily clue into that when it's happening. And they may still forget even after workshopping it.
But when there's ambiguity between what is happening in game and off game, that's where trouble can happen sometimes.
And also if somebody, you know, is introducing something and they get this sort of passive aggressive response in game, that could cause some bleed too. You know? So
there's, there's all sorts of things going on, right? And, and that doesn't mean it's bad, it's just means that every design choice period has consequences. And so thinking through those, and we're not all the same. Some people might love the elegant mechanic that's bespoke and that they don't have to slip outta character and all of that. Others may miss it completely and really need strong, clear signals that are off game.
And like, how do you have a game with all of those people and, and do something that that makes everyone happy?
Well, it's very difficult, but you
know, the important thing is to say, these are the choices we've made. Let's all use them.
another common idea is that players shouldn't independently bring in safety mechanics they know about
Right. Without the whole group being onboarded into that mechanic.
like if it's a small tabletop game, I will say, Hey, can we have an X card if there isn't one? Right? But if it's a a hundred person RP and I start using the X card and nobody knows what that means, then that can be confusing.
However. If I am in a state of distress and all I remember is the X card, it's better that I use it and then explain what's happening than not use anything at all.
So it's
all very complicated.
Sam: Totally. Totally. Yeah, I'm thinking about the, kind of embedded mechanic thing and how much more helpful that feels when, if we're thinking on this sort of like stoplight kind of scale, like that kind of embeddedness feels like a green to yellow situation of like, oh, I wanna like head something off at the pass, but not make a big deal out of it. As opposed to the kind of more, being in much more distressed kind of situation that you were just talking about. Right. Like, I think if I have had a couple of times over the course of my LARPing career as it were, where I have really needed to be like, no, nope, nope. Like, we're not, we need to like really talk about something right now.
And in some ways like. I, I found it interesting when I've gotten to those points how much safety mechanics have failed me because even something like the X Card that I really understand and have used a lot, even in low stakes settings and that like my communities are all really familiar with like, it's not sufficient. It's like the very beginning of what I need in the moment, right? I like need things to stop. I need to have a conversation right now. But the ex card isn't gonna like, have that conversation for me either, right? That when things get really dangerous for me, what I need is like really human kindness and trust and, and support and, yeah. I don't know where I'm going with that exactly.
Sarah: Yeah. Well, I think that you're hitting on something extremely important, and that is a safety mechanic doesn't make your game safe.
And you know, it also doesn't ensure that people will take care of you.
So that's why having an ethos that
you repeat of players are more important than games. And even being explicit about what that means in this group,
like that means that we're gonna check in on each other.
And it might mean that somebody might ask you, are you okay? And here's a way to, to say, I'm fine. Or here's a way to say, I'm thinking of the, okay, check-in here, which is a hands signal or there could be a way for you to just opt out completely.
From that conversation. But these are the norms of the space is the point that I'm trying to make. And what
choices, again, each choice has, its, its consequences, right? You don't wanna, if you have too many signals, people get really confused and they have trouble rumoring what they're supposed to say, and that can cause anxiety and whatnot. But the important thing is that we take care of each other, right?
Like that is the, that is the baseline. And having even one safety mechanic signals to the group. This is a space where we take care of each other and
not have, and especially nowadays, if people don't have safety mechanics and, and they specifically say, we're not doing that here, especially at a
convention space or something like that, where you, they don't even know each other, then that's a big red flag for me.
Sam: Yeah.
Sarah: And, and it doesn't. It probably not, you know, it could be fine, but probably my needs will not be met. You know,
and, and I've, I've, I've had several people tell me over the years that maybe this game isn't for you, just because I get triggered easily.
So, and some, in some cases maybe they were right. But in other cases it's first of all, I think a lack of. understanding about trauma
and how common it is and is and
it doesn't have to even be trauma. It can be phobias, for example. but Also just a lack of emphasis on community care as the core.
there's a wonderful article by Troels Ken Pedersen, which is on Lizzie Starks blog, which says your larp is only as safe as its safety culture. So having a mechanic alone doesn't do it. But having a mechanic might signal, Hey, safety is important to us here. Here's a place where we check in on each other.
Sam: Totally. Totally. I wanna return to, you mentioned the, okay. Check-in there. And I think talking about the, okay check-in will also be an interesting in to the other topic I want to get to of like. How the, the like activation energy, the like perceived social cost that can sometimes be associated with using safety mechanics.
so first could you explain like how the Okay check-in works. And then, yeah, I wanna, I wanna talk about this sort of yellow light part of the, okay check in in particular.
Sarah: Yeah, so, My understanding is that it sort of originated, well, it it's a scuba signal. So when you're, you're,
underwater, doing an o with your hand, which unfortunately now the fascists have taken over,
but, but it's also
sign language. So are we gonna stop using the o? So, you know,
I, I go back and forth on this, but it has to be a signal that people can immediately recognize, otherwise it's gonna cause confusion.
Right? So even just just an o with a hand let's say, and basically what that means is off game.
I'm asking you, are you okay? And I'm doing it in a, in a way, I may say it verbally as well, but I'm doing it in a way that hopefully is discreet, where you don't have to feel like you have to start explaining yourself necessarily.
And then the, the responses are thumbs up. I'm great, you know, so if I'm crying in the corner and it's the best thing that ever happened to me, I might be like,
Yeah.
like full on, you know? but if I am not able to answer, either I didn't see it or I can't answer at all, that might be a sign that something's not okay.
if someone does the thumbs down, then that means I'm not Okay. If someone does the hand gesture, the sort of, so-so, or flat hand, we treat that as a, I'm not okay.
And the reason we do that is because many of us are socialized. Like if you, especially in the us, like if somebody says, how are you? Oh, I'm great.
Like it's, we're literally socialized to say, oh, I'm fine. And so if somebody's like, yeah, I'm okay. Then it's like, Hmm, are you though? You know? So, so even if it's a little overkill if you get the flat hand, it's like, hey, just, you know,
so then the signal is to check in in some way verbally. After that, it might be a super overstimulating combat situation, and you're like, Hey, would you like to go walk somewhere else?
It could be just asking them. How can I help?
There's lots of different ways to approach that. You know, what do you need? They may not know how to answer that question in the moment, though, so that puts some pressure on them. But they may know exactly what they need. Like, get me out of here. I am
totally triggered right now. You know? Or they may not want help. And this is where it gets a little tricky, like what do you do if somebody doesn't wanna be interacted with and they're in an okay check-in situation?
In that case, I would recommend actually. And this is not always recommended by, by the way. But please, people don't do this. I'm this in general, please don't do this, but we have another signal called the look down,
which is where you put your hand over your eyes and that means that I can. Leave the room with no consequence, or you can just ignore me in the conversation. And this was developed by Trina, Elise Lin uh, and Johanna Coonan, as a way to like sort of elegantly bow out of a scene. So if somebody does not wanna have that conversation, instead of hands up, hands down, they can just do look down.
Sam: Yeah.
Sarah: So that is a way I think that you could hack that a little bit for those kinds of situations. 'cause some people really don't wanna break character or they're really not wanting somebody to care for them in that moment. Maybe. So, the, okay check-in is a care mechanic. The look down is, is like I'm gonna take care of my own needs, but you
just push hand. I'm not there and work around my character. Don't give my character any consequences. yeah. So anyway, when I was doing the look down, I was shielding my eyes for those of you who can't see the video.
Sam: Yeah.
It was interesting to hear you talk about the way the Okay. Check-in and the look down might interact to sort of see safety tools in conversation with each other that this whole thing feels sort of like a, I mean a toolbox of tools that you know, you can use to facilitate better communication, right?
Like that's kind of what this whole thing is about. That's part of what players are more important than the game feels like it's about to me, of that, like, the thing we wanna do here is just make sure we not just are talking with each other, but have the right tools to be able to talk to each other in the moment.
And that that, I dunno, this, that brings me back also to a conversation that I've been having a little bit in the tabletop space recently of like, is safety tool the right. Term here relative to the, like a calibration tool or communication tool or something else like that. And I, I know in some of the writing that you sent me ahead of this that I was going through, it felt like there's like safety tool and calibration tool are very related terms, but not a overlapping Venn diagram. And I'm curious to hear you talk about like what the difference is there and how you think about the difference between those.
Sarah: Yeah, I don't fully disagree. I mean, I don't fully agree with that because I think that safety tools are often used to calibrate and vice versa. So
Sam: I agree.
Sarah: There are times when I may just say to somebody, Hey, I really don't wanna play this storyline. Can we try this other thing? Just because it's a personal pet peeve of mine or something.
But more often than not, it's like, I don't wanna engage with this content because it's gonna be really difficult for me in a way that I'm not prepared for. I don't want right now. And so, you know, there's debate on whether or not we should say safety or support or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the fact is everybody uses safety. So that's what we're going to use.
Sam: Yeah.
Sarah: You know, people like to try to rebrand things and sometimes it takes off, but a lot of times it doesn't. So instead, I prefer to use the terms we have and then have more nuanced definitions for them.
And so I would say that, you know, calibration is about negotiating consent, really,
which is safety period. Like it's, it's figuring out what is gonna be mutually beneficial for both people.
However, the content of it looks a little bit differently than if you're saying, please don't bring in this content because I find it triggering versus please don't bring in this trope. I find it annoying. Those are kind of two different things. Right.
but the same tools might very well be being used for both. So for example, if your game only has off game, which is a signal to say, like, you said, hand over the head. Some people do that or in vampire, they cross their fingers.
Or maybe you just say off game. that might be the only mechanic that you have. But what it says is, we break character here and we go off game to discuss things. And some of those things are likely safety related. Sometimes not, but sometimes yes.
Could be off game. Sorry, I just need to use the restroom. I'll come right back. You know, or, or it could be off game. Can we please not go there with this scene?
So the, problem with relying on verbal signals though, and this is, this is something that really frustrates me, is each of the mechanics have a logic behind them that isn't always visible to people. So if they think that one mechanic is exchangeable for another, that's not always the case, right? There's different reasons why, for example, there's an X in the middle of the table and you can point at it versus having a verbal discussion about lines and veils. Those aren't exactly the same thing.
And for people who maybe experience trauma and are not good at verbalizing in those situations, maybe all they can do is point at the X. So, again, it's not that you have to have an X card, but considering what the, the consequences of each design choice are and trying not to see these things as interchangeable.
If you only have off game, and it's a verbal conversation, if someone is in freeze, they're not gonna be able to have that conversation. Right? So then maybe all they can do is give you a thumbs down. maybe they can't do anything, and that's okay too. Like safety tools are not there to fix the situation, right?
They're there to communicate. I'm present and I wanna help. If you need help,
how can I help? Right? So I think people, this is probably going a little deeper than maybe it was intended, but I, uh, we've been studying peace and conflict studies a little bit lately at the Transformative Play Initiative and conflict, which a lot of what we're talking about is related to conflict of different kinds, is rooted in basic human needs.
S and we use William Glasser's model for basic human needs. So he says that there's five main needs. And there, unlike Maslow, it's not a hierarchy. There's just all present. There's love and belonging, which is one. There's freedom, there's fun, there's power, and there's safety or security.
So when we're talking about safety, we're talking about one of the core basic human needs. I mean, this is so fundamental and so a mechanic isn't going to solve that, but having something there to say, I care about your safety, is actually super important.
And, again, it has to be reinforced by the play culture, otherwise it's useless and it might actually cause harm. If you say, I care about your safety and then you clearly don't, like, you're not respecting the ex card or something like that, that can actually be even worse 'cause somebody lowered their vigilance and then they felt betrayed afterwards.
And I think there was a very public example of that recently as I'm sure the listeners know,
Sam: Yeah. so this LRP series that I'm doing I'm curious to hear from people who know a lot more about larp, like what is something maybe around safety in particular that you feel like the tabletop RPG world could learn from LRP?
Sarah: Well, you know, I think the tabletop rpg world is already learning a lot from lrp.
you know, I'm doing a lot of peer reviewing of papers right now, and either it's totally LRP focused or totally tabletop focused. But the truth is that in the last 10 years, there's been so much crossover and so much interchange and so many folks that are shared between both communities that I think it's like both need to be acknowledged as being in dialogue, which wasn't the case before. Orb, there was a lot more of a bifurcation in terms of these communities. And even, communities within tabletop and, you know, of course that still exists to some degree,
but the, fact that it's talking about safety tools is so ubiquitous in general right now, is pretty amazing.
And I would say it's actually more com. I, I, it's hard to say I'm not embedded in some of these buffer communities, but I would say it's, it's really, really common in tabletop right now to talk about.
But in terms of LRP safety,
I mean, what LRP is is space and that's that. I mean, it doesn't mean that tabletops don't take place in a space 'cause they do. Obviously it's a very different space if you have a private, kitchen or, or dining room or something versus a convention loud convention. Floor. Like those are very different spaces, but, one of the things that we do in LRP is spatial design.
So like, is there a place that you can take someone, an off game room where you can give them some chocolate and a cup of tea and a blanket or something if they're feeling overwhelmed, you know? Thinking about space and tabletop I think could be very helpful.
Like, as a gm, what do I do if I'm at the convention and somebody really needs to leave the room? Is there a place that I can offer them? And you probably can't leave the whole game, but maybe you know of the safety host down the way. Right. So
thinking about space and also thinking about spatial design in terms of safety, it's like, is there a place this person can even leave the room right now? You know, sometimes the door is like blocked or something like that or it's just really like you, you mentioned social cost earlier. Maybe it's really costly to walk out at that particular time. So I think the look down is a mechanic that might be helpful in tabletop more often, somebody just being able to do the look down and leave the table.
I haven't personally seen that in tabletop. It doesn't mean it's not happening, but I think that's a good one.
Sam: I certainly learned about look down through researching for this episode, so feels like a great mechanic.
Sarah: It's, it's super great for all sorts of reasons, because it's just like the X card, you don't have. Have to give any reasoning for it. And the example that's often given around this is like in magic school, like in New World Magischola or a College of Wizardry, one of these games, maybe you want to come into class and be the troublemaker that comes in late and then there's a big scene around that and it's super cool 'cause you're the bad character or whatever that's like breaking the rules. Sometimes you really don't want that. You're like terrified. Maybe that that's your worst fear in college was when you got singled out for coming to class late. So then the look down's super helpful. It's like, please don't play on this. I didn't mean to not be here on time. Just let me go to my seat.
Sam: Yeah.
Sarah: So things like that.
Sam: yeah. Cool.
And then I don't necessarily expect you to have a good answer to this question, but I'm gonna like, ask it anyway. I'm curious, where you see conversations about safety evolving in the future. Like where do you think that they are headed?
What are other ideas that maybe are less explored that you are curious about or what's coming?
Sarah: I don't know if it's so much other ideas, but there's definitely camps that are forming that are ProSAFE, but have their own version of safety, which I think is very interesting. You know, it. the only thing that matters to me is that a group agrees on how to take care of each other. That's literally it. Like
I don't, I don't care. People think that I'm super invested in everybody using the okay check-in. I think it's a great mechanic, but I understand it has flaws. Because personally, I think it's, it's really important for people to feel care, not just to. To say, oh, we care about each other here, but actually to
witness it and model it.
But that, that's just a personal preference. Like if everyone decides, we're never gonna break character, but we all care for each other here and you know, have, some sort of structure, some sort of safety net, but everybody agrees to, then great.
The problem is when people say, oh, we don't break character here and we all trust each other. Right? And then somebody feels peer pressured into not sharing if they are not comfortable with somebody. 'cause they wanna be part of the group.
And that's what's happened for many, many years and you know, groups that I won't mention by name, but, you know, it's, it's sort of like the, the only game in town. So people feel like they have to engage. And yeah.
Sam: it, it does feel in some ways like. The problems we're talking about here are as old as human fucking civilization and like the future is gonna be more of them and like, you know, like we've got a lot of good tools here and I'm sure we'll get more good ones in the future too, and more ways to talk about this and more ways to communicate. And there will also always be assholes and we'll have to figure out how to deal with them and, I don't know.
Sarah: Yes. And I think this is a critical, the reason I care so much about safety in this context is because it's critical for us to figure this out as a species. S
Sam: Yeah,
Sarah: because we are really bad at caring for each other. I mean, we, cause unimaginable harm. I'm not saying you and I, but I'm saying humans, you know, sometimes it might be you and I, without meaning to, but
I'm thinking about direct human cruelty and, you know dehumanization and war and all of that. And it's absolutely critical that we figure out how to be inclusive and to to love each other. I mean, it's, it, it's, our survival depends on it.
So we can argue about which mechanic is better, but if we're all on the same page that we should care for each other, then I'm happy.
Sam: Yeah. Well that feels like a wonderful place to, to end it. I hope we continue to do that and I love that games give us a place to practice doing that. So Sarah, thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate your time.
Sarah: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Sam: Thanks again to Sarah for being here. Sarah provided me with a thorough and juicy bibliography in the lead up to recording. So if you're curious to read more about all of these topics, including more of Sarah's own work, definitely check out this week's show notes.
I added a few pieces of my own too. Thanks to everyone who supports Dice Exploder on Patreon. As always, you can find me on Blue Sky at Dice Exploder, or on the dice Exploder Discord, and you can find my games@tonal.itch.io. Our logo was designed by sporgory. Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray. And our ad music is Lily Pads by my boy Travis Tessmer. And thanks to you for listening. I'll see you next time.