Ludology 227 - Respect the X

Emma and Gil moderate a roundtable on safety tools in games, with guests Kienna Shaw and Lauren Bryant-Monk (creators of the TTRPG Safety Toolkit) and John Stavropoulos (creator of the X-Card).  We discuss consent and safety in games, starting with tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), but expanding to all sorts of games. How can safety tools help in games, and in what ways do they help? Content Warning: this episode mentions occurences of consent violations, domestic abuse, and sexual assault. SHOW NOTES 23m25s - The D&D Adventurers League is an official ongoing play, organized by D&D's publisher Wizards of the Coast. 32m29s - Kids on Bikes, by Jon Gilmour and Doug Levandowski. 33m17s - Avonelle Wing is a longtime RPG/LARP player, convention organizer, and advocate for equality and justice for games. She's one of Gil's idols. 34m11s - Kate Bullock is a TTRPG designer, advocate, writer, and president of the Indie Game Developer Network. 39m58s - Nordic LARP is a form of LARP with minimal rules and GMing, but heavy atmosphere and story. Compare it to demonstrative (boffer) LARPs, which tend to be more fantastical and have NPCs and combat rules. 43m20s - An otome game is a story-based video game that generally has the player control a female character, to try to develop a relationship with one of the game's male characters. 46m10s - Here's an especially horrifying story about an awful GM that came out of UKGE last year (BIG CONTENT WARNING for sexual assault in that link). Note that this is one story, but there are many more that never get this much coverage. The story about the public live stream that went wrong is here, and carries a similar content warning. 52m07s - You didn't think we were going to go a full episode without bringing board games into it, did you? :) 1h00m26s - Self-Promotion: you can find more info about Gil's Check-In Cards here. 1h00m57s - Twilight Imperium being a 6 hour game about galactic conquest. 1h06m58s - Psychologist Susan Silk and her friend Barry Goldman wrote about this in the LA times. They called it "Ring Theory," and in it, they discuss how you can comfort a grieving person while not burdening them with your own pain, by placing them in the "center" of the crisis and being mindful of where you are relative to others in that ring. 1h10m03s - Restorative justice is a methodology that has the victim and offender meeting (often with community members), with the expectation that the two parties will come to a consensus on what happened, how much damage was caused, and how the damage can be repaired. This gives the offender a clear path to righting the wrong, and empowers the victim in the process of seeking justice.