If I use these rules, then my game group will (1) reward/select for those who enjoy, tolerate, or are-afraid-to-object-to content that some other person might find disturbing and (2) punish those who find certain content distressing by forcing them out if they need to take a time-out more than once because nobody in their supposed-friend group prioritizes their friend in distress over their own brief fun for a scene in a game...it doesn't make any sense! I use actual safety tools because I actually play with people I care about...steer clear of this document if that applies to you. I read this doing my best to assume the author was writing this in good faith, but that part in particular (Tool 4 Freedom to Leave) broke any illusion of that. In my games, I want everyone to have fun--they're games. If people are not having fun, of course I'd want to adjust things! And if they're not just not having fun, but are in fact deeply distressed by something, I'd be an a**h*** to ignore that, but then to punish them for that is just incomprehensible to me. One player wants a brutal mob execution scene to play out when another's family member was killed that way? One PC commits sexual violence against another PC, and despite leaving the game for the session is told on return that this 100% happened in-game no matter their feelings about it? These rules don't address many situations I personally know of having happened. "Common courtesy" out-of-game is nice and all, but those who perpetrate these sorts of behaviors tend to argue "oh it's all in-character" and blame everyone else for "being unable to handle" reality vs. game separation. In LARPing communities, we call this "bleed"--and it's pretty universally recognized that it's essentially impossible to 100% compartmentalize, hence most LARPs having extensive safety tools. Big red flag against any player or GM who values a minute of provocative description over the mental peace of their friends and fellow players. These "tools" do allow for the GM to communicate things at the beginning of the campaign, but there is no opportunity for the players to communicate anything they are concerned about--nor is there any way for things to be resolved if the GM didn't communicate properly (far more likely than not). My personal thing is that I can't hear vomiting sounds (acted out or sound effects) or listen to a vivid description of vomiting without actually vomiting myself--but these rules don't account for this or many other situations, so woe to the carpet of whoever is hosting game I guess. Normally, this comes up during a session zero using actual safety tools, so it generally works out. Finally, according to this, game > campaign > all else; if I want that experience, I'll just play a video game. For GMs that value the campaign above the players, just go write a book already.

Then again, maybe everybody should read this; that way, if you join a game where the GM introduces these tools, you can know to steer clear.

Hi DM Bluddworth,

I originally paid $0 to pull this down and look at it, because I saw it referenced on a site called GeekNative.com, an article by an Andrew Girdwood called "RPG safety has always been important: A review of Safety Tools of the OSR Table" (I don't know if I can post URLs here, can I?).

I read his article, I read your document. ... I then posted a comment at the article's site which basically said how dishonestly the article author was misrepresenting your document as a justification for the new breed of Safety Tools. Yes, I pointed out that your article's page 7 specifically says "I believe they were not needed" and the point about the Tools being abused for the tyranny of the one.

... I'm stunned the comment post got approved on the site because I used phrases like "the comparison is ridiculous", "your logic is dangerously bad".

... and then I came back to DriveThru in order to pay AUD$10 for your document because damn, your article is definitively better than the unpleasantly dishonest website plumping it. To be fair, so would biological waste, so let me be clearer - your document is great.

If you want to write a screed about how kids these days are ruining gaming, post a series of angry tweets like the rest of us.

This is a bad faith effort in addressing something that is a really interesting question. There are questions about what the best practices around merging OSR style games with "saftey tools." They're not inherently opposed, but the interaction between the two is unexplored. I really wanted to see that. Maybe there are things to do differnetly. This is not that exploration.

Even if absolutely correct, even if you ought to, as the book suggests, get people who invoke such tools to quit your game, this is a disingenuious way of promoting that idea, a pay what you want strawman argument largely for a readership who can pat themselves on the back afterwards and claim the same self-rigthetousness that they assert their opposite are weilding towards them.

Good common sense ideas rather than the unnecessary and counterproductive safety tools that are proliferating.