accessibility – Page 2

PTSD, access to role-playing games, and the Luxton technique by P.H. Lee

This post was originally posted on G+ by P.H. Lee on August 28, 2017. It was a significant influence on updates to the Script Change RPG toolbox, and is an essential read in regards to addressing safety in the game community and at every game table. Lee has authorized me to post the text here in full since G+ is dying, which I greatly appreciate – it’s super valuable!

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Preamble

I have PTSD. About 6-7 years ago, more or less, various pan-RPG techniques to control triggering[1] content — The Veil and the X-Card, to name two of a vast diversity — became commonplace in the RPG circles that I played in. Around the same time, I stopped participating in role-playing games at meet-ups and conventions, or anywhere else that these techniques were promulgated. These three things (PTSD, X-Card, and my withdrawal from play) are related. I’m writing this essay to discuss the ways that these techniques cut off my access to role-playing games, and introduce know techniques that, I hope, will point to a way forward in terms of accessibility.

Conflicting Access Needs
Before I go further, I’d like to reference a term from the disability rights movement: conflicting access needs. Disabled people are extremely diverse and our disabilities are also extremely diverse. While an ideal world would have everyone’s access needs met at all times and in all circumstances, in many circumstances, with many disabilities, that is practically or fundamentally impossible.

An example, which I’m paraphrasing from Autistic blogger Mel Baggs: A group home for Autistic people have some occupants who constantly verbalize, and others who are hypersensitive to noise. The verbalizers have a reasonable access need to be allowed to verbalize. The hypersensitive have a reasonable access need for quiet. Both of these access needs are reasonable, but it is impossible to meet both of them in the same space.

For this essay, the point is that, while I’m describing ways that my (and others) access to role-playing games has been cut off, I want to acknowledge that the techniques in question were developed and promulgated — often by people with similar disabilities to mine — to meet a legitimate access need. That they cut off my (and others) access to role-playing games does not mean that they are inherently wrong, bad, or ableist.

I do not want this to turn into “X-Card (or The Veil, etc, etc) is bad” and, even more so, I do not want it to turn into “the people who propagate these techniques are bad.” That’s not my opinion and, also, it’s wrong. I am hoping that by writing this essay I can move the discussion of accessibility of RPGs for PTSD sufferers from “use this technique” to a conversation which can account for different players, different goals, different communities, and different access needs.

A Note on Personal Narrative

I’m going to use a personal narrative throughout this essay, because it is based on my own experiences of both role-playing games and PTSD. But I want to be clear: I am not speaking solely for myself in this. Simply from personal circumstances, I can attest that the problems I have are problems that are shared by a number of other people with triggered mental illnesses.

Likewise, there are people with triggered mental illnesses who have a very different experience — most importantly, there are people with triggered mental illnesses who find the X-Card, The Veil, etc. to be vital techniques for their access to role-playing games. I do not want to erase these people — they exist, and their experiences also matter.

Please do not take my use of personal narrative as evidence that I speak only for myself. I don’t. Likewise, please don’t take my speaking on this topic as someone with PTSD to assume that I speak for all people with triggered mental illness. I don’t.

The X-Card, the Veil, and all that

The X-Card, the Veil, and similar techniques have their roots in a section of Sex and Sorcery, a supplement for Sorcerer by Ron Edwards, where he (roughly paraphrasing) suggests a technique dealing with difficult sexual content in the game by “drawing a veil over it,” basically, describing it in loose terms and then moving on with play, rather than playing it out. This is included together with several other techniques, including actually playing it out and fading to black. From there, like many things from the Sorcerer supplements, it developed on the Forge forums as a more generalized technique that could be applicable to all games.

I first encountered The Veil as a universally applicable technique in the context of public play in the Pacific Northwest — I believe it comes out of the Go Play NW convention, but I could be mistaken. By the time it reached this form, it had mutated considerably — it was something that was invoked by a particular player, rather than a general technique for play, and it generally had the effect of erasing the content of play [2], rather than playing it out in a vague sense and then moving on. It became a widespread meta-technique[3], adopted at a lot of public play events.

Simultaneously [4], in the New York City play scene, John Stavropoulos developed the X-Card as a meta-technique. With the X-Card, the system is formalized. By “throwing the X-Card” (either a physical card marked with an X or just an invocation), a player stops play, and the offending material is erased, and play continues as if it had never happened.

The X-Card grew in popularity and was adopted throughout the indie-games public play culture. By the time that I had largely retreated from public play (~2013), it was fairly universal. Although I have not been in touch with public play culture since, it does not seem (from my outsider perspective) to have become any less widespread.

My Experience

My first reaction to The Veil as a meta-technique was simply “well, I don’t want to do that.” At the time, it was not generally regarded as a universal meta-rule, so that was the end of my encounter with it. However, as it grew in popularity, I began to be increasingly averse to it. I remember a particular event — I think it was at Indie Hurricane, although I could not guess at the year — where it was introduced as a generic rule for all pick-up games. I got a horrified, sinking feeling, my eyes started to flutter and my stomach twisted — familiar signs of a triggering [1] event. I cannot remember whether I then said to my players “I’d like not to use that for our game” or not — I cannot even remember if I ran my planned game or left the scene immediately. Poor memory often accompanies being exposed to triggers.

I tried playing a few games with the rule in place, thinking I could maybe get used to it. Even though, to my recollection, it was never invoked, those games left me an anxious wreck afterward.

I stopped going to convention events as often. I started going to local public play groups, but shortly thereafter the meta-rule spread there as well, and I stopped attending those as well.

I did not at the time understand why this was triggering to me. I’m not entirely sure I was conscious that I was being triggered — it seems obvious in retrospect but I think that at the time I was not able to recognize exactly what was going on.

I made several attempts to communicate my distress — I remember talking on separate occasions with John Stavropoulos and Avery Alder about it — but because I didn’t understand what was going on, I could not clearly explain my problems, let alone propose solutions. Obviously, my attempts at communication were unsuccessful [5].

The Veil was replaced by the X-Card, and the technique continued to spread. I continued to retreat from Indie RPG circles, although I continued to play with personal groups and in non Indie RPG spaces such as AmberCon NW.

As an aside, I should say that this inaccessibility was far from the sole reason I retreated from Indie RPG circles and that, also, I do not regret having done so. My retreat has allowed me to spend more time on fiction writing, on personal friends, and on campaign play of RPGs. All of these have benefitted me both personally and professionally.

The problem

Both the X-Card and The Veil (as practiced in the PNW at that time) have as their core concept that the correct default way to handle triggering material in a role-playing game is to excise the material from the fictional timeline and thereafter to continue play. This is a commonplace understanding of how triggers work — remove the trigger, problem now solved.

This is, for me, a disaster, because it replicates the environment of denial and powerlessness that caused my PTSD in the first place.

Fundamentally, any approach to triggering material that contains any element of “pretend it never happened” is emotionally disastrous for me, because it recapitulates the environment of denial and dismissal around my traumatic experiences. This is not limited to excising the material from play — it also includes attempts to dismiss, deny, or minimize it.

No technique that centers this approach can possibly be functional as an accommodation; furthermore, any game or community that uses a technique that centers this approach is necessarily inaccessible to me, because an environment that centers denial as a coping strategy for triggering material, is in and of itself, a traumatic trigger.

Centering status quo vs centering healing

Fundamentally, these meta-techniques center the status quo — the goal is to “deal with” the triggering event, or the triggered person, and then return to regular play as if the interruption had never happened. I submit that, due the nature of PTSD, this approach is fundamentally flawed.

Once I have been triggered, I am in a traumatic experience. No amount of care or concern or comfort or accommodation can untrigger me. The question is not “how do we return Lee to the status quo?” or “how can we stop Lee from having a traumatic experience?” because those goals are impossible. The question is “what kind of traumatic experience is Lee going to have?” It can either be a damaging experience — one that reinforces the trigger and my PTSD — or it can be a healing experience — one that lets me recontextualize the trigger and its part of the trauma into my normal psyche.

Denial and social pressure to “return to normal” are damaging experiences.

Acknowledgement, empowerment, and story-building are healing experiences.

I believe that, in principle, good techniques for dealing with PTSD in role-playing games will avoid damaging experiences and center healing experiences.

The Luxton Technique

I didn’t post about my problems with X-Card, The Veil, etc for a long time because, among other factors, I did not have a proposed solution or alternative technique. All I could do was say “I’d rather have nothing than this,” but “no technique” is not particularly good rallying cry and it was not really a meaningful solution, just an attempt to get back to the somewhat-more-accessible-but-not-great status quo.

Until last year, I truly believed that there was no technique that would improve access to RPGs for some PTSD sufferers without also excluding PTSD sufferers like myself. But, last year, I played in a role-playing game at AmberCon NW that was specifically focused on traumatic experience and, particularly, centering the trauma of the players in the story we made. In that game, we used a particular technique — which I’d like to call the Luxton Technique after the GM of the game — which I found to be empowering, healing, and accessible to me.

It’s difficult for me to summarize all the parts of this that worked, but, roughly, the Luxton Technique includes:

* An honest discussion of potential traumatic triggers prior to play, in a supportive environment, with the understanding that there is no possible way to identify or discuss every conceivable trigger or trauma, and with no social pressure to disclose particulars of individual trauma.

* When, in play, a player encounters triggering material, they can, if they choose, talk about that to the other players. When they do this, the other players listen.

* As part of talking about it — and possibly the only thing that they need say — the player is given absolute fiat power over that material, expressed as a want or a need. For instance “I’d like to play [character name] for this scene” or “I need this to have a happy ending” or “I want this character to not be hurt right now” or “I need this character to not get away with this” or “By the end of play, this should not be a secret” or “I need to stop play and get a drink of water” or “I don’t have a specific request, I just wanted you to know.”

* A player does not need to use their traumatic experience to justify any requests or demands. We just do it.

* A player does not need to be the one to speak first. We keep an eye on each other and we are watchful for people who seem withdrawn or unfocused or upset. If we are worried about someone, we ask.

* We play towards accommodating that player’s requests.

It’s hard to overstate how much the Luxton Technique (or, really, set of techniques) helped us approach extremely difficult, extremely person material, both for the trauma survivors at the table and for the non-survivors. Rather than having our traumatic experiences — already a disjoint with reality — cause a disjoint in play, we were able to integrate them into play and tell a story about or, at least, at an angle to, our traumatic experiences, real and pretend.

Healing and RPGs

I am well aware that it sounds both pretentious and terrifying to talk about RPG play as a process by which one might legitimately heal from trauma. But I’d like to elaborate on that a little, because I think it’s important.

Fundamentally, a traumatic experience is an experience that is at a disjoint with the narrative of one’s life. Having PTSD means that your trauma exists out of time, out of place, and always in the present tense. A big part of recovering from PTSD, inasmuch as it is possible, is not about excising the trauma or your continued experience of it. Rather, it’s about integrating the trauma into normal memory and a normal narrative of your life.

A big part of that is story-telling, because a story is about incorporating disparate elements into a coherent narrative. And, for me, a big part of that story-telling has been role-playing games. In this essay, I present the choice as a binary — either a game can harm, or it can heal. That’s a lot of pressure to put on something as casual as a role-playing game! But, also, story-telling helps, and the story itself doesn’t need to be traumatic. Any story-telling experience can contribute, constructively, to healing, because PTSD sufferers need to be able to tell our own stories to the world and, more importantly, to ourselves. As an accessible storytelling medium, RPGs can’t be beat. They have been, and continue to be, a great help to me. In introducing these techniques, I am hoping that they can continue to be a help to others as well.

This is not limited to “heavy intense” sorts of stories that directly reference trauma. Ordinary RPGs can be stories about friends sticking together, or triumphing over evil, or just being clever and solving traps and puzzles, all of which have the potential to be healing narratives. Don’t think that I’m limiting the healing potential of RPGs to “serious” games or “serious” stories. I’m not.

It’s a reasonable reaction to say “I don’t want to do anything that heavy in my RPG!” or “I can’t be responsible for this!” And, obviously, don’t play in circumstances that you’re uncomfortable. But RPGs, and the people I’ve played them with, have given me so much healing. It’s wrong for me to dismiss, deny, or belittle that simply because games are a recreational activity. I hope that, in looking at problems of accessibility of RPGs, we can look to their potential to heal as much, if not more, than their potential to harm.

My hope (edited addition)

My hope is that this essay will start / continue a conversation where we look critically at our tools and techniques for RPG play. I hope that we can get to a place, as a community, where we understand that they are not one-size-fits-all and that we are able to take a look at what that means in terms of accessibility. I’d like for us to be able to make better-informed choices about accessibility and our RPG play, and the trade-offs that entails.

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[1] Because I have no alternative vocabulary, I’m going to use “triggering” in this essay to describe images, words, or ideas that trigger traumatic flashbacks, panic attacks, or other PTSD symptoms. I’m aware of the popular usage of “triggering” as a derisive term for an emotional reaction. I am not using it in that respect. Please, also, refrain from doing so in responses. Thanks.

[2] I’m not sure exactly when the pivot from “veil as not playing out blow-by-blow” to “veil as erasing the content from play” occurred. It might have been after this.

[3] I use the term “meta-technique” to mean “a role-playing game rule intended to be used with any game.” In some cases, it is “a role-playing game rule intended to be used with every game.”

[4] I am not sure about the historical relationship between the X-Card and the Veil. It’s possible that there was some inspiration. It’s also possible it was a parallel development.

[5] I do not want to cast any aspersions on John or Avery for our failure to communicate. Both of them listened as well as they could have to my concerns, even though I was unable to communicate them clearly. The failure was definitely on my end, and I want to thank both of them for their patience in waiting this long to hear my thoughts more clearly expressed.

Official Statement on Perpetrators of Harm

I have puzzled for days on how to make this statement, so I hope this ends up being good enough. The Twitter statement was brief and to the point, but this needs to address some things more specifically. I do appreciate your patience.

Content Warning: Sexual assault, sexual harassment, harassment, grooming, threats, doxxing, rape, missing stairs, abuse of authority.

It starts out bad.

There was recently a statement released by Mandy Morbid and two others, Jennifer and Hannah, all ex-partners of Zak Smith (a.k.a Zak Sabbath, a.k.a. IHitItWithMyAxe, a.k.a. dndwithpornstars). The statement described domestic and sexual abuse by Zak towards the women in some detail (link here, content warning for domestic and sexual abuse, ableism). It was followed up by a statement by Vivka Grey reporting similar issues (link here, content warnings for domestic and sexual abuse, toxic objectification).

The internet in indie and OSR gaming erupted. It spilled elsewhere, too. Zak has been a troublesome member of our community for some time – people have been reporting his harassing, threatening behavior for around a decade, including many marginalized people who were pushed out of the community by the bad behavior or by backlash after reporting. Some people were pushing to excise him immediately, others wanted his story. Some of us got caught up in community in-fighting that served to muddy the waters, but I think it’s beginning to clear.

I will give full disclosure that, by my experiences, Zak has made my life more difficult. The actions of his supporters have done so, as well, including some people who will go on without ever apologizing or making up for it, I know that. I don’t trust a lot of people because of Zak. I think his actions have threatened my professional career and they have been part of the impetus for the clinical acute paranoia and trauma triggers I suffered that partially led to me having to leave my rather lucrative corporate job in 2015. Yes, I was vulnerable in the first place. That doesn’t mean that making it worse through ill behavior was a kind and loving thing to do.

That means it is easier for me to make a statement that I will not publish articles supporting his work, that I will not go to conventions that support his work. However, Zak is not the only missing stair in our community (link to blog post about what missing stairs are, content warning for sexual assault and rape). There are people I used to work for who have done harm too, and one of those has been public since around the Harassment in Indie Games series I did in 2017, but I didn’t make a public statement. I should have.

It gets worse.

Matthew McFarland, someone who I have interviewed for Thoughty and who I have worked for while doing the Demon: Interface project, is a serial predator. Cheyenne Grimes came out about this in 2018 to IGDN (link to Cheyenne’s recent post, content warning for sexual assault and trauma), and the investigation that occurred then is being re-investigated because at the time, Michelle Lyons-McFarland was IGDN president. When Matt was removed from RPG.net as mod, reportedly Michelle was still a mod and helped to prevent further survivors from speaking up. Some of those survivors like Luka Carroll have spoken up publicly (link here, updated link here, content warning for grooming and assault and specifically noting relation to trans individuals as targets.)

I am angry about this. I am bitter that this entire situation occurred, that Matt could keep doing harm, that it was covered up, that people were ever harmed at all. I am angry I ever promoted Matt, or considered him a friend. The thing is, Matt is not the only person I have had an experience like this with.

There is a situation some people find themselves in where they know secrets. These secrets are very important, and if they confessed them, maybe someone could be protected. But if they confess them, maybe someone could be hurt very badly. This is the peril of knowing about missing stairs in the community, and knowing on behalf of their survivors or yourself. I know about multiples of these and until I am authorized to do so by the survivors or those currently affected, I won’t release the information. I made that choice. It still feels absolutely vile. I am angry about it every single day.

In for a band aid, surgery later.

That’s part of why I have taken on some specific rules that I talked about on Twitter.

Understand forgiveness is hard and complicated.
Work toward it anyway.
Don’t harass, doxx, or threaten anyone for any reason ever.
Take care of yourself.
Take care of each other.
Remember that infighting is what bad actors want.
Center the survivors.
Try to love, if you can.

Sounds harder than anything right now, honestly. But, I’m trying. With these comes people making statements, and sometimes those statements are less than great. I’m not linking to the good ones or the bad ones. I don’t have that time.

What I do have time to do is give my statement. The official Thoughty word, as it were, here on the blog, not just on Twitter. This is what I can do right now. What I will do going forward, a bit, but it’s a now. How do we fix our fractured community? How do we build bridges between indie and OSR and trad when somehow they’ve all been blown up by this? How do we deal with the fact that there are missing stairs everywhere, and they mostly remain some charismatic fuckers? I can’t tell you that.

I can tell you to learn about DARVO, the way abusers behave when called out (link here, content warning for discussion of abuse and trauma), and when someone is an asshole, don’t blame it on the internet. I can tell you to practice apologizing well. I can tell you to check those rules I just shared and follow them. And I can tell you this:

I love you. Even if you fuck up, I will love you. All I ever ask of you is to try to be better. If you are doing bad things, stop doing them. Apologize. Try to make up for it. Don’t hurt the people any more than you already have. If you’re not doing anything bad, keep an eye out for the things that might make you slip up. We all fuck up. Thoughty isn’t a site only to promote and praise the perfect, but we had better do a damn good exercise in trying if we want to make the world stay alive for tomorrow. I expect you to be better. Every chance you get.

The Official Thoughty Statement

Thoughty supports survivors of abuse and harassment and believes them.

This platform is not a space for anyone who perpetrates acts of harassment, abuse, or violence, especially against marginalized individuals. Thoughty will not post to promote or endorse these perpetrators on the main site or on social media.

I will not attend or endorse conventions without an effective and enforced code of conduct, and if I know a known perpetrator is a guest, I will not attend or endorse.

Thoughty can and will refuse any and all submissions for interviews, features, reviews, or endorsement if there is a publicly or privately known allegation of abuse or harassment that I can in any way reference.* If I am made aware of an allegation after posting an article, I will assess whether it is safe to contact the accused to let them know they can appeal, and whether it is or not, I will take the post down or post a warning at the top of the post based on the perspective of the survivor if I am able to obtain it.

I reserve the right to take down posts or apply warnings at the top for any reason, even beyond this, because the safety of my readers is paramount.

If you are aware of a post I have up that supports a perpetrator of harm in our community, please notify me using my content form and I will assess it as appropriate. Please understand I am running the site on my own, so things may take time, but they will be resolved to the best of my ability.

Thank you for your time and attention on this big post! And thank you for taking this in, and moving forward for the better. Believe survivors!

*ETA 2/16/19 5:31pm – changed “confirm” to “reference.” The former is not what I meant. I just mean I need to know what the allegation is.

approachable theory: Post-Consent Safety Paradigm

Hi all! Today I have a post from J Dymphna Coy on the subject of post-consent safety paradigm. For some advance clarity, consent is basically whether or not we grant permission for people to do a given thing. And if you click here, you can find some references for the safety tools mentioned. Otherwise, I think you should be able to follow the article pretty well!

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A few months ago, I attended a session at RightsCon about Sidewalks Toronto. Sidewalks Toronto is a project by Alphabet (i.e., Google) to build an entirely new neighborhood in the city of Toronto from the ground up. They want to create a so-called “Smart City,” which uses various electronic surveillance tools in order to allocate resources more efficiently.

Naturally, the attendees of a digital rights conference cast a somewhat skeptical eye at this development. But one of the things I kept hearing about was “informed consent.” The most common question was some version of the following: “How can we make sure that people have informed consent about what kind of data is being collected about them?”

Mark Surman of the Mozilla Foundation brought up an interesting point: the business model of Google (and virtually every other Silicon Valley company) is to collect as much data as possible and then decide what to do with it all later. How can we even have informed consent, he said, when even Google doesn’t know what we’re consenting to?

Ultimately, my conclusion from the session was this: consent is ultimately meaningless in the context of the information economy. We cannot place the burden upon the populace as individuals to protect itself from Big Data; we must collectively assert our rights as a society and place the duty upon megacorporations to not exploit us.

a graphic representation of an index card with an X on it

That’s all well and good, you might say, but what does it have to do with gaming?

The inimitable Jess Hammer once mentioned that the X-Card has been dubbed a safety tool when it should more properly be considered a consent tool. The observation stuck with me, and I’ve been tooling it around in my head ever since.

So what is the difference between consent and safety?

Consent* happens before a game begins, or during a game. It involves mechanisms for determining the content of a game, or whether the game will continue at all. The X-Card, cut-and-brake**, and lines and veils are all good examples of consent tools.

Safety happens during or after a game. It involves mechanisms for directly attending to the emotional well-being of the players. A well-done debrief is a safety technique. De-roling is a safety technique. Anything that requires that players provide care (rather than merely asking if care is necessary) is a safety technique.

This is not to say that consent tools are bad, or should not be used. Quite the opposite is true! But they should be regarded for what they are, and used in a way that complements safety tools.

So why should I bring up Google’s data collection practices in this context? Surely a put-upon LARP organizer who already has to deal with the utterly thankless task of running a game does not have anything in common with Silicon Valley megacorporations. After all, the power relations are completely different. We can negotiate consent with another player of a game in a way that we can’t with a company like Apple. I can walk up to my fellow player and say, “Hey Fred, please don’t include bananas in this game, I have terrible fructiphobia!” By contrast, the notion that would could just write a letter that read, “Dear Apple, Please remove line 52 of this iTunes agreement because I don’t like it!” and expect results from it is absurd.

I bring up the comparison because much like Sidewalk Labs, your fellow players of a game have no idea what’s going to happen, and therefore any consent-based paradigm has limited utility at best. I bring it up because I want to emphasize the importance of safety and care, and to make sure that we’re not glossing over these things as designers and communities.

I’m not a big fan of making up categories of things for its own sake, or of having self-important internet arguments, or crushing my community with the tyranny of small differences. But I’ve heard the common complaint for years that safety mechanics don’t quite do what they’re advertised, and I hope that making the distinction between consent and safety might make something clearer in at least one person’s head, and maybe even make games a little better for the people who play them.

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*It is perhaps worth noting that consent originated as a legal term. It’s designed to protect various parties from indemnity or liability. While legal protections are important, focusing on what technically legal is not necessarily the best way to give guidance on how to navigate ways to avoid hurting or exploiting the people around you.

**The OK check-in straddles the line between what I’m deeming as “safety” versus “consent.” It resembles safety insofar as it places the onus on the entire community to ensure that that all of the participants are OK, rather than on other mechanics that place the onus on the affected person to tell the other persons in the scene to stop. I’m calling it “consent” here because it primarily involves whether or not care is necessary, as opposed to actually providing said care for the most part. But like all categories, the point is not to get into nitty-gritty arguments about where the boundaries are, unless you find that sort of thing really exciting (I find it tedious).

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Thank you so much to Dymphna for the excellent article! I hope you’ve all learned something a little new today. 🙂

P.S. If you’d like to write an article for approachable theory, email Brie at contactbriecs@gmail.com with a one paragraph pitch, your name, and your pronouns.

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Five or So Questions on Power Outage

Hi all! Today I have an interview with Bebarce El-Tayib on Power Outage, a superhero game for kids that’s currently on Kickstarter! Bebarce has given some excellent answers to my questions, so please check it out below!

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This is a logo that was announced post-launch!

Tell me a little about Power Outage v 1.4. What excites you about it?

Power Outage 1.4 is a large leap in a series I’ve been developing for the past 4 years. It’s a Super Hero themed tabletop roleplaying game designed to be played by kids and GMed by adults. This would be the first attempt at making the book something I’m comfortable with being available in Print.

It’s exciting to me for a ton of reasons aside from the fact that it’s probably the largest and longest running creative endeavor that I’ve ever taken on. But I would have to say that the biggest excitement comes from the scope of change between 1.3 to 1.4. It’s a monumental shift. There is a completely revised mechanic system, much greater resources for crafting your own adventures, and the biggest thing of all is the expansion of guidance to not only include differentiation, but also a focus on creating more accessible gaming tables. Plus its just the inherent potential of creating something that introduces a new generation to a hobby that I and many others love.

Two character sheets, one more complicated design (labeled before) and one refined visually on the left (labeled after).

An example of the result of the Kickstarter funding on the character sheet.

When making games for kids, your point about a accessibility is super important. How do are you designing and developing Power Outage to be accessible, and why does it matter to you?

My work in Public Education as a technologist has me dealing with data often. Part of that involves creating considerations for Special Education, and managing Special Education Data. So when it comes to creating accomodations I realize the monumental task in front of me. As soon as I started I realized there was no end, so I’m tackling it from two fronts. In the book I have a section dedicated to Accessibility guidance. I broke the sections into 5 specific domains outside of general guidance. Physical, Communicative / Receptive, Behavioral, Cognitive, and Emotional. What I’m essentially doing is tackling the topic from a symptomatic approach, rather than a cause approach. Tthat limits me to an extent from the specificity inherent with conditions, but allows for the broadest spectrum of guidance. I have 2 directors of special education I’ve worked with helping to ensure that the information I’m providing is safe, sound, and that the terminology is effective.

Seperate from that I created a wiki called www.accessible-rpg.com It is currently under developed, and tailored primarily to children, but eventually I’d like it to become a free resource to people developing games or running tables, to create a more accessible gaming table. It’s a larger goal than Power Outage itself, and its only going to be successful with community involvement. That’s why it’s built in the wiki format. It has to be populated with information from the people who are directly effected. It has to be live, and continually changing. I plan on jumping right back into it once I’m done with the kickstarter, and pulling in as much guidance as I can get.

As to why it’s important to me, I could try to relate to work, or family members, or some forms of tangible relationships to be people I know that have disabilities, but in all honesty, it is something that we should ALL be working toward. Roleplaying games allow all of us to not only break free of the limitations we find in our every day lives, but express our real selves through our avatars. We bring our strengths and our perceived weaknesses and allow them to shape a world we actively create. The absolute NEED to make that process available to everyone is imperative. We need to be accessible. We need to be inclusive. We need to bring everyone to the table, and if we can’t, then we need to drag that table over to them.

A muscular character in a cropped jacket with a toaster for a head, a carafe as a gun, and a waffle press hammer labeled "BREAK FAST"

What are the mechanics like in Power Outage? How do you encounter and overcome challenges?

So we’re working with kids. That takes “expectations” and throws them into the waste bin. So the idea behind Power Outage’s mechanics is in compartmentalizing game play so that kids can be playing their own individualized game while still contributing to the greater narrative. It’s taking the concept of differentiation from the classroom and applying it the gaming sphere.

What it boils down to is the idea that the game is more a guide then a hard set dogmatic codex that must be followed. GMs provided guidance to players based off of their capabilities, and to do this effectively, the mechanics have been made so that it’s easily accessible to everyone involved.

Characters have 4 attributes. IMPACT – which effects basic human characteristics POWER – which effects their super heroic capabilities OHMER – which is the stat that IMPACT and POWER compare againsts and YP – Yield Points – which is the point pool that Heroes have before deciding them must Yield or regroup. There is no death in Power Outage.

The 4 attributes covers a lot of types of conditions, but is a reduced amount of record keeping so that not only are kids able to focus more on roleplay and story elements, but so that GMs can more easily manage groups of kids who for instance may not be able to read yet, or add large sums.

In order to allow creative freedom for kids to make the heroes they want, Power tables are provided with effects are provided and grouped to Combat, Support, and Utlity. Kids work with the GM to determine what their heroes can do, and the GM helps match the power to an effect on the table. So if you’re doing 1d4 damage from up to 20 spaces away, it doesn’t matter if that effect comes from a flame torch, or a snow ball, or lightning bolt or psychic shock. In short, Power Outage provides the effect, and the hero provides the flavor.

One last thing I’ll mention is the CAPE system (Combat, Alternative, Puzzle, and Exploration) It’s a way to compartmentalize adventures so that you can cherry pick what you want for your play sessions. In the prewritten adventures (to be released, although one is included with the core book) it becomes a choose your own adventure mechanic. Do you prefer to not have violence in your session, Alternative Components match up to every Combat Component. Are puzzles too difficult? Move around them directly to exploration. It allows GMs to build adventures that pertain to the needs of their group.

All of this comes from the game kids want to play, rather than the game kids are forced to play. And it happens at all levels. From something as simple as the character sheets “Character image” section being enlarged because kids want more room to drawing their characters, to color/symbol coding Attributes so that a GM can easily say “Tell me the red number” or “Tell me the number with the boot symbol”

letters and symbols in primary colors: C with a fist in red, A with a shield in green, P with a puzzle piece in yellow, and E with a magnifying glass in blue.

The five regions for playing in sound really fun! What are they like to play in? What exciting elements do they have in store?

So not only are the 5 regions different stylistic settings, the settings themselves allow for potentially uniquely suited playstyles as well.

The Atomnyy Zavod is a always night gothic soviet atomic punk city. It’s gritty, and confusing, and the some of the starker elements are only highlighted by the oddity of it’s semi-futuristic elements. You’ll see old-timey vehicles driving under nuclear battery powered street green glowing street lights. But this is the perfect setting for gritty noir mysteries. You’ll use Exploration and Puzzle solving components just as often if not more often then Combat/Alternative.

Shorai City is it’s opposite in many ways, with it’s soaring Neo-Japanese inspired towers, flying cars, and robotic servants. This city has become a gathering point for many big heroes and villains, and often becomes the setting for large confrontations. This setting is great for large Beat Em Up style baddies that hearken back to the Golden Era comic days. Villains include Mrs. Roboto and The Tempuritan.

The Overgrowth is by far the most expansive region of Outage. The product of Outages once barren but strange landscape, had tests done on it in the early stages of American involvement causing the worlds largest forrest to grow. That forrest however was both invasive, aggressive, and sentient. Still outpost seem to coexist within the Overgrowth. A musical troll city, a city of Outcast Powers (the name for people with Powers in Outage), and a School for Sandwich Magic are just a few examples of what is discovered, but certainly more mysteries lie within under the canopy. This setting is great for all sorts of Campy Adventures or Mythical Fantasy type games. One area might hold dragons, and the other might hold dinosaurs. Ancient civilizations come to light or scientific outposts. Villains include Treestache and Swagneto.

The sink is a geological anomoly. It is a peninsula on the south eastern coast of Outage. One end appears to be sinking steadily in the ocean while the other side of it emerges from the ground far inland, seemingly with intact ancient structures. At it’s tip, the sink features a floating shanty city of disreputable individuals known as The Scum. Under the ocean as the sink delves further into it’s depths lie ancient cities under the water, sealed off from the ocean that surrounds it (for now). This is a great city for acting a bit rebellious enjoying some not so squeaky mission, confronting morale dilemmas, or just outright exploration. Whether you’re in the muddy bayou, exploring submerged catacombs or getting into naval battles with or against pirates, it’s usually a nonstop adventure. Villains of note include The Boat Rocker and InstaGator.

Finally, Seward’s Refuge is central to the island continent. It is an American run scientific and military facility, that serves often as a waystation between regions, a central government, a barrier to the Overgrowth, and it’s Space Elevator even provides access to the stars. This region is great for multi-region adventures, political intrigue, science gone wrong, or incursion/spy missions. Villains of note include Agent Orangutan and General Specific.

Each region has areas that aren’t directly drawn out leaving exploration up to the imagination and creation of the GM. There is also a section in the book detailing potential other locations including Dimensional and Temporal options. It’s a huge sandbox that kids and adults can play in. You can build just about any game you want to in the world.

A character with short hair, goggles, and augmented clothing - armor with radar antennae, a claw hand, and braces at the knees.

With all of the efforts that you have put in, do you have any hopes moving forward for Power Outage and even other games to become more accessible for kids?

Yes, I think you’ll see a lot more of this cropping up. There is a positive shift in the culture of gaming that not only lends to more voices being heard, but a general awareness of the roles we play in inclusiveness, accessibility, and security. A lot of people grew up with these games, and are looking to share it with their kids. In he end, getting families around the table and talking and gaming with each other was the seed that my game grew out of. And as we learn more and more how games effect the ability to understand and retain knowledge, to become flexible and willing to learn new things. It’s becoming an imperative.

The Power Outage cover including an imposing image of a toaster-headed being in the background next to turrets, with a knight-styled character with a cape in the front holding a horse staff, next to a person in crash-test dummy styled costume.

What a nifty cover!

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Thank you so much to Bebarce for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll check out Power Outage on Kickstarter today!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

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Big Bad Con 2017 Saturday & Panels

I attended Big Bad Con 2017 in Walnut Creek, CA on a scholarship from the con. This is post two! Find post one here.
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I got room service to make sure I finished my homework. >.<

I woke up after like, real sleep for the first time in a while, and wrote a paper for school before messing about hanging around with people until my next panel. I was brought a handy towel by Dante so I didn’t ruin the hotel towels and, tbh, I couldn’t find the towel before I left Monday morning, so no idea what happened there.

The next panel I was on was Gaming and Emotional Safety, with Mickey and Misha. Everyone knows I’m a pretty woobie heart person so I get emotional a lot, and I also have had some trauma in my life that I struggle with and that can (sometimes nonsensically) come up in game. We reviewed many of the various safety tools (though not all), noting that they’re not one size fits all and that people should use what works for them.

We discussed the importance of pregame discussion of content and tone, debriefs, and emotional safety as a whole. Games might not be everyone’s standard definition of “fun” but we aren’t there for abuse. It’s important to be on the same page, respect each other, and check in. I reminded people that even if they’ve had the same group for decades, they may make their games more fun for everyone by talking to their friends about their preferences. This included discussing racism, sexism, homophobia, mental illness, and so on.

more here>>>>

Games here that have risks in them: Misspent Youth, Lovecraftesque, Night Witches, Dread… that’s just a few. They are awesome games, but we gotta be safe. This is taken when I realized that games I worked on were for sale (Lovecraftesque), but handy for demonstrating games with inherent issues – like the racism and mental illness stigma in Lovecraft.

I also noted the difference between a squick and a trigger. Squicks are things that gross you out, make you a little uncomfortable, etc. They can stick with you, but are unlikely to have long term mental health impact. Treat these with respect – make sure people are okay with them, ensure they’re tonally appropriate, and be willing to alter content if it needs to be done. Triggers are typically tied directly to trauma and can result in panic attacks, nightmares, and activation of things like paranoia and mania (in my case). Don’t approach people’s triggers without checking in and getting their permission! And if you know about common triggers, ask your group before including them, but don’t require details. There’s also phobias, which I suggest treating much like triggers. Always check in.

There are some people comfortable with approaching their triggers and phobias on purpose, which Mickey and Misha discussed a bit. It’s not something I normally venture into, but they talked about how it can be helpful to work in that abstracted environment. Really loved that part of the panel!

Finally, we talked about inclusion, exclusion, and bad actors. The key points were 1) it is always okay to leave a game for any reason and especially if you don’t feel safe; 2) if you include people who hurt others with the content included in their play, you are excluding those who will be hurt, including excluding people of color in favor of racists, excluding women in favor of rapey men, etc.; and 3) you can always eject someone from the group. Always. If someone is hurtful, if they’re unsafe, don’t give them a space to be that way.

I was reminded later in the weekend how vile in-game violation of consent is. If you force a player or a character to do ANYTHING they don’t consent to, including ignoring at-the-moment objections, you are behaving inappropriately and you’re hurting people. Reconsider your role until you learn how to play games without hurting people.

I was lucky enough after the panel to meet up with Brian Vo, who made me a cocktail! It was nice to meet him and the drink was great. 😀

My nerding out in clothes for fandoms I’m not in.

The final panel I participated in was Adult Themes in Gaming: Adult versus “Adult” with Mickey Schulz, Clint “Ogre” Whiteside, and Jason Morningstar. It was a really great panel and I was excited for it because this is a topic that’s meaningful to me, specifically: what content is really mature content, how to present it, the tools we have to manage it, and adult content that isn’t just sex.

(It’s always funny when I run into Jason because we’re both typically busy, and we have these mini conferences like “what are you doing?” “what are YOU doing?” “I’m doing THIS!” “OMG tell me more about this!” and it sounds silly maybe but running into him like that is always awesome.)

We talked about the content we include in games – Mickey and Ogre include pretty much everything that their table is safe with, which is a lot (sex, romance, violence, and other stuff that needs to be approached with caution); I tend towards having lighter content, emotional interaction, some tougher topics, and I don’t approach sex very much; and while Jason covers a lot of more complicated stuff like grief and war, he doesn’t really touch the subject of sex at all in his games, though he discussed a recent experience playing a happy, healthy married couple and how transgressive it felt. It was so cool to see a variety of experiences at the table.

One note: Mickey commented on this and is making changes for future panels, but everyone at the table was white. This is something that is actually common to happen, but it wasn’t intended and it’s not a good trend, so more effort going forward will happen.

We talked about the difference between having content exist and be played out (which some people might consider more pornographic in regards to sex), and having content that fades to black or is glossed over. This is something I think really needs to be discussed in detail with players and GMs at the table, making sure everyone is comfortable.

Some people might want to push their own boundaries, too, which is dependent on a lot of factors. Specifically, I might be willing to address sexual content at a table full of close friends, but at a table with strangers it might not be okay. Likewise, there are non-sex topics that are challenging and mature. Violence is one of them! We use violence freely, but that’s not necessarily because it’s appropriate. We should be more considerate of this – Jason even said he’d like to explore more ways to resolve conflict without violence (my mini pacifist high fives this idea). Grief is another subject.

Before this con, and before last year’s Metatopia, I had a grandparent pass away (my grandmother first, then grandfather). I still went to the cons, and played in games where grief was relevant. At a lot of tables I might have stepped away or asked not to cover it, but both of these times I had people I trusted (last year was Jason, Amanda Valentine, and Roe Nix playing Storybox and this year was Hakan Seyalioglu, Kristine Hassell, Vera Vartanian, and Vivian Paul playing Dialect), and who I knew wouldn’t treat me badly if I cried a little or if I needed a break.

Honestly, the newest addition to Script Change, frame-by-frame, is here so that when people want to explore topics that are challenging, they can do so. It’s not always easy, but making a safe environment matters. Safety tools, discussion among players, developing a social contract – these things matter.

Useful tool (yes I’m reusing this picture) even at its base mechanics – using more of them can make games better.

One of the things we discussed was about deciding not to play or leaving groups. Just like in previous panels, we talked about ejecting harmful people and bad actors, but we also talked about self-selecting your group. Stepping away if the space isn’t safe, tapping out, or leaving groups: these are all okay. It’s okay to say no. We need to make it normal to leave games, to step away, and to take care of ourselves. That’s part of handling adult content.

After the panel, I had a bit of a breakdown. I was still processing grief (I still am!), I had done three panels without a panic attack which is amazing, and I’d been traveling and surrounded with people and writing a paper… I was exhausted. I burst into tears when I was alone by the elevator, fell to the floor, and just sobbed until Stephanie Bryant found me. Angel that she is, she made sure I was okay, took me up to my room, and reassured me it was okay to be upset. I’m so grateful for that!

I spent some time talking with Tanya and some Twitch and gaming friends of hers, & one of them who had attended the panel said the work I was doing was “so important, so valuable” and it really felt amazing to hear. I don’t often think of anything I do making a difference, but hearing other people say it is super awesome. It matters a lot to me. Thank you to anyone who thinks well of my work – I appreciate it so much.

I’ll have one more post covering Sunday with my games of Who Made Me Smile? and Dialect. Thanks for reading!

SNEAK PREVIEW! Dialect table!

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Script Change: Official

Hi all!

As of today, you can download a PDF version of Script Change that is formatted and easily printed.

I started writing Script Change, from what I can remember and what Google Drive tells me, in 2013. I had started playing indie games a while before, and earlier that year, I’d written about how I’d used the X-card in a game of Monsterhearts. With the X-card, though, I used a secondary card introduced by Kira Magrann called the O-card, effectively a way to encourage people to do the thing that you were enjoying.

I have a lot of feelings about safety mechanics, trigger warnings, and so on. I really appreciated the X-card. It gave me some new freedoms, I could try things I wasn’t familiar with. And the O-card was great, but I realized that I didn’t need it if people already knew what I was looking forward to, what I wasn’t sure about, and if I had something other than the X-card to show what way I thought the story could go.

Script Change has had many, many updates. Briefly, there was an applause function to encourage people to do things, but I felt it wasn’t genuine enough. Thinking it through, I really thought the core things in it – rewinding to redo scenes for whatever reason, pausing to take a break and get perspective, and fast-forwarding to get over things that are too much or that we just don’t want to bore ourselves with them – are more important than anything else. I’ve added some smaller things in the end, like the Wrap Meeting for debriefs, Instant Replay to reduce confusion, and the Highlight Reel to help keep people excited and enthusiastic for the game.

The biggest thing about Script Change is that it’s supposed to be flexible. It demands a conversation about consent, and about what people want in a game. It reminds people that games are not set in stone. We aren’t chipping into marble, here. We are telling a story as we go, and we can change things to make it more exciting, more fun, more of whatever we want – and less of what we don’t want.

Script Change is not the only content tool out there, and there is a lot to be said about doing what works best for you. But, it has been a labor of love for me, because I want people to play games that they enjoy! I want them to have experiences of a lifetime with the chance to pause and get ready for more, or even just a chill beer and pretzels night where the tonal shift can be easily fixed with a “rewind.”

I hope that you’ll check out Script Change and if nothing else, just see if you can glean something new from it. Most of all, I hope you have a hell of a good time playing some games. <3

Download the PDF here!

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Five or So Questions with Jack Berberette on DOTS

I found out about the DOTS GoFundMe that Jack Berberette is doing to purchase and use a Braille Printer to make braille games available for gamers through G+, and Jack was willing to answer some questions! Check his responses out below, and give the video he made about braille translation a view if you can!

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Tell me about your Braille printer project. What excites you about it?

One of the things I’ve learned, after starting on this project, is that electronic equipment, learning materials, books, and more are beyond expensive for the visually impaired. The braille embossing printer, for example, is normally $3,500 to $4,000 dollars (it just happens to be on sale right now). The bottom of the line printer is normally 2 grand! I’m sure I’m not alone when I say, “I can’t afford that!”

I translated (with some tweaks) The Black Hack RPG. The Black Hack is a FANTASTIC game system created by David Black. The game has been streamlined to a 6″X9″ booklet with about 20 pages, give or take. A brilliant system put out there under the Open Gaming License.

Anyway, the braille translation weighs in at about 80 pages. Now if you went to an office store and had an 80 page book printed and spiral bound it would cost $5 – $8 bucks tops. I reached out to a few companies and they wanted over $200 to make 4 copies of the book (spiral bound)! Now let me put this in perspective…while the printing equipment is expensive, the paper only costs 3 cents per page, and no ink is used in printing braille. Their material cost is about $1.75 if you include the spiral binding and thick front and back covers. It would only take about 30 minutes to print all four books and let’s ad in another 30 minutes to clamp on the spiral binding. Even if the person was making $15.00 an hour and we add in the $7 for the four books….the total cost is $22. AND…this is a “non-profit”, braille printing company…other places had comparable prices.

What is so exciting about the printer, is that I will be able to print a duplex page for about 3 cents. This means that I will be able to afford printing a lot of things for free, or at cost depending on what’s being printed. The Black Hack braille book, for example, I wouldn’t charge anything but the few stamps it takes to mail it.

ALSO, and this is freaking awesome, the printer will print 8 levels of tactile graphics and comes with a full suite a translation and graphic design software. This means that I can translate D&D 5e character sheets, Pathfinder Character sheets…any character sheet in to braille with tactile squares where the values are placed (Ability scores, hit points, etc.). The plan is to glue felt into the squares and then print out number chips with Velcro on the back so visually impaired players can fully and independently manage their character sheet.

I can also printout dice labels and transform regular polyhedral dice into braille dice. I’m currently doing that but I have to, dot by dot, use a slate and style to create the numbers, then modge-podge them to each side of the die. With printed stickers, I could cut the out, slap them on then spray a poly protective coating. This would cut my time drastically and afford me the ability to make a bunch more sets which I give away for free!

With the graphics capabilities of the printer, we can even add in tactile dungeon maps for the GM. How freaking cool would it be for a visually impaired GM to be able to actually feel AND read a map of a dungeon?!

Here’s a really cool video that shows how tactile graphics can be created/

What excites me more than anything though is the thought of being able to have the equipment to put a game book in the hands of a blind player. Giving them the same excitement of flipping through spell lists in that frantic time before your initiative comes up…just like a sighted player. Enabling gaming independence so a visually impaired player can experience the full range of activities a sighted player does.

LOL…I didn’t realize just how excited I am about the printer until I typed all of that out. I’m very passionate about helping people and this printer will allow me to do wonderful things for the visually impaired community.

…(more inside!)

What motivated you to translate into Braille?

I was talking with my visually impaired gaming buddy one day. He has several World of Darkness Books, Changeling, etc. So I asked him one day what equipment he had at home, and basically he has a computer (without a braille reader because it’s expensive) and an iPhone. (Here’s a link to a braille reader so you can see what they do…they are nifty devices but are SUPER expensive).

I brought up the books and asked how he “read” them…the answer broke my heart. He’s never “seen” nor “read” a page of those books…he has an awesome gaming group that reads things to him from the book. I do want to say however, that this guy is a masterful GM and remembers EVERYTHING he hears and can point you to pages in the book from memory….he blows my mind :).

Sorry…back to what I was saying, I asked him if he talked to other visually impaired people that were interested in tabletop roleplaying. He told me that he has had several people ask about how to get into it but had to explain to them that they needed a sighted player to take them in because there were no gaming materials accessible to them. That’s when my furnace lit and I KNEW that something ha to be done. So I reached out to him and another friend and the project has taken off since then.

I remember vividly my first gaming session…the magic that it instilled in me. I still carry that spark with me today and I’m almost 50. I want the visually impaired to be able to experience that as well…but with a feeling of independence. I want them to enjoy flipping through page after page planning their next move, how to design their character, to argue rules LOL!

That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing…and why getting these translation out there is so important.

Have you tested this with any gamers who would find it useful, by putting the game in their hands?

LOL…this is the magic question. The answer is no because I don’t have a way yet to print the materials in braille. So for anyone reading this DONATE AND HELP SPREAD THE WORD! 🙂

What type of games are you interested in translating? Are you sticking to traditional games, or would you be branching out into indie games like Dungeon World or OSR products like Lamentations of the Flame Princess?

That’s a great question and the short answer is ALL of them! Gamers are a very diverse group, so I’m hoping that we will be able to translate all sorts of RPGs. I love OSR games but I also love really cool things the indie designers are coming out with like Dreamchasers. I would love to see Savage Worlds, Tunnels & Trolls, D&D 5e, Gamma World, and more translated. But for now, I’m working with some indie game designers to translate their games (4 projects are in the works) as proofs of concepts. Once we have that process really fine tuned, I would like to put together a translation team and start taking on bigger projects….books from the heavy hitters like WotC, Paizo, and Green Ronin. The thing we have to be careful of is making sure we work directly with the companies so that we adhere to Intellectual Property policies.

I’ve already translated The Black Hack by David Black, and I’m working on another Black Hack game called Kaigaku by Jacob Ross…this is a Samurai fantasy game!

How do you want to get the translations to people – is the hope to put them in game stores, or sell them online?

To start, we are raising funds for a braille embossing printer that will print not only duplex pages, but also tactile graphics. For games that are free, I’ll print them for free or at cost and only charge shipping. If a game designer wants to make a braille version of their game available, I’ll print it for them at cost and they can sell it to the customer. My ultimate dream is to raise enough awareness that places like DriveThru RPG have contracts set up with braille translators and printing houses so that braille books will be one of the options when purchasing from their site. Same goes for the industry heavy hitters!

If any game designers are reading this please reach out to me! Let’s blow open the doors of tabletop roleplaying games for the visually impaired!

Here’s our current GoFundMe!

What do you think you would do for games that have supplementary materials like cards or dice or playmats – is that a someday goal?

Well starting out I’m focusing on books and dice….basically using those as projects to raise awareness for game designers out there to see the need for accessible materials. But my end game is to raise awareness to the level where designing for the visually impaired becomes a normal part of the game design process, to include but not limited to dice, cards, playmates, character sheets, dice boxes. deck boxes, etc. What I want the gaming industry to realize is that there are a lot of gamers and potential gamers in the visually impaired community…and they need to be an equal consideration when games are designed. I was floored that in this day and age, there is almost a complete void of gaming materials for the visually impaired. How in the world did we overlook an entire demographic who would TOTALLY embrace tabletop gaming, if simply provided the materials to do so.

I turn 50 in less than a year, and I have been gaming since I was twelve…it’s a huge part of what shaped me into who I am today. I am dedicated to planting the seed that will grow into a thriving piece of the gaming industry. Come hell or high water, I’m going to make the gaming community aware of this need and will give every ounce of energy I have to seeing that need met.

Get ready gaming world, the doors of tabletop gaming are going to be blown wide open for the visually impaired…just wait!

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Thanks so much to Jack for answering my questions and for his awesome initiative! According to the GoFundMe, the printer itself has been ordered, but Jack is aiming to get a 3D printer to print out dice as well, so go check it out! Keep up with what’s going on with DOTS on their Facebook group, too!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!

To leave some cash in the tip jar, go to http://paypal.me/thoughty.

If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

Not Just Your Opinion

Hey guys in games!

Yes, you, the one with a recognizable name! Or you, who has a bunch of followers on social media! Oh how about you, with the style and character that everyone thinks is super cool? Even you, my guy, who just talks a lot.

I’m going to tell tell you something awesome that is also pretty awful.

When you talk, people listen.

They don’t just read you or hear you, they take it in. They appreciate it. They might disagree with you, and some of them will tell you as much, but many of them will just take a deep breath…

share your post…

And be like…”yeah man, this guy is RIGHT!”

After that, when someone else – especially a woman, trans, or nonbinary person, and sometimes (if you are not these things, but sometimes if you are) a person of color, queer person, disabled person, or person of a “lower” social or economic class – says something that isn’t the same as your point, they get a response that can kill discussions and innovation and learning in a hot second:

“But [you, man with influence] thinks…”

Boom. Well, we know who matters now, don’t we? And this is not just a mention of your feelings or what your personal preference. Often, it’s law. This is how games work!

You can’t do that when you hack this game because he said…

You can’t use those words to define something in your game because he said they meant something different 15 years ago.

Well, those aren’t real games because he said…

Yeah. It’s super common. I can think of at least 5 men in games – just in indie games! – who I have had my conversations deadlocked because “well he said…”

And like, guys. I love you. I think so many of you are freaking awesome. Some of you are close friends, and I trust some with things that women and NB people I know have never heard. I respect your opinions and we often agree.

But when I disagree with you, or I just have a perspective that is different, I know I can get shut down with the mention of that social media post you made five years ago when you were bored on a Sunday afternoon. Your words, when it comes to thoughts about games, are often not just your personal thoughts shared with the public that will only be referenced as your feels, man.

And no, this is not only men and not all men but it is way more than you think and way more likely that it’s you than you think.

Here are some suggestions.

Learn to preface your opinions.

“In my opinion…”

“Personally…”

“My personal favorite…”

“For me,…”

“I can’t speak for others…”

Don’t assign value.

“It is more useful for me…”

“What works better for me…”

“I personally enjoy…”

“I have more fun when…”

“My tastes are more suited to…”

Respect those who know the subject.

If you choose to speak your mind about something outside your expertise, or even within your expertise, don’t be a jerk when someone disagrees with you or corrects you. I totally understand feeling a bit defensive but don’t treat them like an idiot, understand that they may know better than you or simply have a different opinion that is also valid, and don’t let anyone supporting you go after them either.

Respect those who are impacted by your opinions.

If you’re going to say that Nordic larps are fundamentally not games, remember that people are still making and playing those larps and deserve human respect. That means not letting your buddies pile on your trash things with personal attacks or even just misguided points of view. If your criticism could impact people financially, think it through damn hard. Real damn hard.

Just… don’t.

We all have our opinions and it’s cool to share them but sometimes, there’s a real value in the act of shush. I can’t offer deep insight on how early D&D mechanics influence Dungeon World, so I don’t (I have no idea if they do). Maybe if you are a man who has strong financial security and has good education, and access to lots of resources, you shouldn’t say that there’s no way people couldn’t afford games and that implying that anyone who can’t get the money together is irresponsible. Sometimes…shush.

And like, guys, I still want to hear from you. I love your thoughts. I learn from them and share them a lot.

Just…be better.

Gaming with Fibromyalgia (x-posted Imaginary Funerals)

This post has been crossposted from the Imaginary Funerals blog that has since been discontinued. Posts are hosted on the Imaginary Funerals G+ page.

GAMING WITH FIBROMYALGIA (link to main host)

by +Brie Sheldon (originally posted January 24, 2014)

A little background:

I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia when I was 12. It was a lousy diagnosis to get at such a young age, but the symptoms were pretty clear and they’ve only gotten worse since then. If you want to know more about fibromyalgia, a quick internet search should answer any questions you have.

I started tabletop gaming around age 15 or 16 (I’d done text RPGs for years by that point). At that point, my fibro wasn’t too extreme, but I still dealt with some of the problems – leg cramps, soreness, and fibro fog. These things have increased in severity and frequency since then.

I know a lot of people have it way worse than me, but I wanted to share my experience. Maybe it will help other people, and maybe it will help con organizers, GMs, and other players understand the difficulties people like me face. So, what’s so hard about gaming with fibromyalgia?

Managing climate control. Holy crap is this hard! I don’t know if gamers just run hot or what, but virtually every gaming space I’ve ever been in is too cold for me. A lot of people game in basements, which (even when finished) are often cold and sometimes damp, and it leaves me aching and sore and generally pretty miserable. This year at cons I ran into the problem of it simply being way too cold in some of the rooms, so by the end of sessions I was cramped up and ready to go lie down. But sometimes, you can’t lie down – you have to keep going, especially when you feel the social pressure to be involved or just really want to be involved.

Standing or sitting for long periods. This is something I’ve complained about before, but, super long lines for badges? Standing in food lines? Waiting outside con rooms? Yeah, standing for like 20 minutes is rough. My legs cramp up, my back sometimes seizes, and there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do. Accommodating disabled people is not something cons are great at. It’s troublesome, as well, when you don’t have a visible disability, like me, or when (like me) you don’t have special tags designating you disabled-enough-for-people-to-care. Likewise, sitting at a table (especially in the aforementioned cold rooms) can mean that standing up is a struggle, and it is simply embarrassing to be a 20-something woman who can’t stand up from the table without wobbling. People stare.

Fibro fog. This is probably one of the toughest things. The pain and stiffness I deal with every day in every type of situation, so it becomes a quiet echo of my life, “pain, pain, pain” beneath my breath every moment. You kind of get used to it. The fog, though, isn’t constant, and is worse during times of anxiety and stress. Basically it makes it hard to focus and makes me seem dumber because I can be slow to respond or get confused. For the longest time I didn’t understand what it was, but now I’m pretty familiar with the feeling. I try to hide it because it’s legit one of the things about my illness that makes me feel the most stupid and useless. Ever try adding together dice or adjusting target numbers when your brain feels like it’s stuffed full of cotton? It’s like that all the time. It’s kind of like when you have a sinus headache or like a post-narcotic headache. (This is also a problem when navigating conventions because I get lost and lose track of time very easily when the fog sets in.)

Feeling singled out. I rarely game with other people with disabilities, just because of the way my circles have worked. This means that I’m often the only one at the table who needs accommodations. I’m the only one who needs to be given a break or time to stretch during long gaming sessions. I’m the only one who needs help doing basic addition when my fog is too foggy. It’s just me sitting there having trouble. So far my groups have been pretty great about it, but that doesn’t make it easier for me to feel good about it. An example: asking people to please grab me a drink because that extra walking today just is a bad idea. Most of my group would happily do so, but that doesn’t make me less embarrassed or make me feel less like they should hate me for taking advantage of their kindness.

Gaming with fibromyalgia isn’t easy. It’s got a lot of pitfalls and there aren’t really bonuses for being disabled.

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Safety and Table Techniques, My Take

Of late, there have been a lot of people making efforts to design table techniques and safety techniques. This is great and I’m happy to see design work and attention to communication and safety at the table! …however, I have some thoughts.

The two most recent tools I’ve seen are the Support Flower and the Edgewise card.

I’m going to be judgy. I know, what do I know? Nothing more than what I know, which is my experience, emotions, and background.

I think the Support Flower is interesting and has good intent. However, the design is an issue. With the arrangement of the flower, if I (someone with relatively short arms) tried to reach across the table to tap or point to the red center, what if I could only reach the green petals, or someone thought I was just pointing at the slow down petals? Maybe I’d have to move it closer to me, moving it farther from other players and also setting up an implication that I would control the content, as well as possibly distracting from the game.

As well, the slow down or gentle option can be confusing. Without discussing what content is troubling, how do you be gentle with it? Isn’t it just as much of a disruption of the game to pause to clarify because “hey I’m uncomfortable with or nervous about this content” is very vague and can be an issue? (I have seen this with the X-card, too, and complained about it.) These are things that worry me.

For Edgewise, it has two issues. One, the introduction of the card comes across as an admission that there is no trust for basic respect at the table and no attempt at gaining or giving it. It says “None of you will let me talk, so here is a tool that I’m going to have to use to work around you.” This is different than safety cards because we can all assume people want to talk, but knowing what will trigger someone or bother them requires a deeper discussion.

It also, secondly, completely disrupts norms of communication. It says “I am not listening to what you are saying, I’m just waiting my turn to speak.” It gives no respect to people who might just be making their point and not steamrolling if the person who wants to use it is just barely holding back at talking over that person and ignoring their point. I also know it can be used as a means to take control of the discussions at the table.

We have a tendency as gamers to avoid communication. We may not ask each other about how things make us feel. We can be afraid to share the things that make us uncomfortable because people might judge us. We can be afraid to say “Hey, stop, I don’t want to see this.” But we can learn. We can step up as players and designers and GMs to say “Ask people what is okay for them. Give people space to express *openly and explicitly* what’s not comfortable for them.” And if people judge others for being uncomfortable with certain content? The uncomfortable people should be the ones who get to stay at a safe table.

We may excuse misbehavior as social awkwardness. We may say that someone is too awkward to know when it’s okay to speak, or that some people have trouble using social cues. And for some people, these things are true. For autistic individuals and people with anxiety, I can see a lot of these troubles and accommodation is important. But this is not all of us. We can’t excuse everyone because of some people’s genuine needs. We can learn and grow and get better at talking to each other and learning body cues. Hell, even people with anxiety typically have the capacity to learn these things.

If those of us who can learn these things and can design for these things and support these things don’t make those efforts, we don’t give space for the people who really need support and space. We can learn how we can act and be open and honest about our feelings and perspectives so that people who can’t feel safer and if they can, someday might be able to do the same thing.

I see the meaning and intention here, and I know no tool is perfect. This is just where I am seeing flaws and why I wouldn’t like these tools at my table.

ETA: I was talking with John about some of the user design issues here and we noted the issues of visual impairment and colorblindness, as well as ability to physically access the tools. (I have in Script Change that you can vocalise the tools, but I haven’t seen this as an option in many other tools.) Accessible tools matter!

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Tag: accessibility

approachable theory: Post-Consent Safety Paradigm

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Content Warning: Sexual assault, sexual harassment, harassment, grooming, threats, doxxing, rape, missing stairs, abuse of authority.

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In for a band aid, surgery later.

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