Lines and veils: Difference between revisions
From The Wild Tangents
(Created page with "== Lines == These are the lines-in-the-sand. It's something we agree upon as a group and decide on the things that simply do not exist in our campaign world. The point is to get together and play a fun fantasy game, not be weighed down the the ethical dilemmas from our everyday lives. The big obvious ones are: No slavery<ref>test</ref>, no rape/sexual assault, no bigotry<ref>test2</ref>, etc {{reflist}} <nowiki>*</nowiki> things become a gray area with characters havin...") |
No edit summary |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
= Lines = | |||
These are the lines-in-the-sand. It's something we agree upon as a group and decide on the things that simply do not exist in our campaign world. The point is to get together and play a fun fantasy game, not be weighed down the the ethical dilemmas from our everyday lives. | These are the lines-in-the-sand. It's something we agree upon as a group and decide on the things that simply do not exist in our campaign world. The point is to get together and play a fun fantasy game, not be weighed down the the ethical dilemmas from our everyday lives. | ||
The big obvious ones are: | == The big obvious ones are: == | ||
No slavery< | * No slavery | ||
** Things can become problematic in this regard, since it can be easy to slide into the comedy of hiring <s>slaves</s> unpaid interns. Some fantasy worlds we might decide to completely side step by saying slavery doesn't exist in this universe, other worlds we might decide slavery exists in the backdrop of reality but our campaign won't have anything to do with it, and yet others we might decide slavery exists and our characters are driven to liberate the enslaved. In any case, a line is drawn where we/our characters will not be the enslavers, regardless of how many unpaid interns we might like to have on staff. | |||
* no rape/sexual assault | |||
** obvious reasoning here, too real for fantasy and has no place at the gaming table. | |||
* no bigotry (racism/homophobia/transphobia/sexism/etc) | |||
** Things become a gray area with characters having a variety of ancestries, and how other characters within the world might react to certain ancestries. An easy way to handle this is generally characters might find it unusual to see certain ancestries in certain areas, but have no fears about them reductive opinions about their ancestry. | |||
* etc | |||
But we might decide, as a group to draw some lines to things like: no stealing or no bloodshed | === Campaign-specific ones: === | ||
But we might decide, as a group to draw some lines to things like: no stealing or no bloodshed. | |||
For the no stealing/no bloodshed type of examples: it might be because we have personal, IRL, convictions surrounding it | |||
Or, in an interesting twist, it might be story-related such as playing a campaign. Maybe we are all clerics and champions of a goody two-shoes diety where we took an oath to never lie, steal, or draw blood. The party then has to use clever roleplaying and problem-solving to find ways through all encounters and combats with non-lethal attacks and such. | |||
= Veils = | |||
These are the things we decide can happen, they just happen "off-camera" behind a veil. | |||
An easy example: maybe not everyone wants to see a player roleplay with the GM through a scene where the barbarian beats the crap out of the hog-tied villain-king for information, but everyone at the table absolutely agrees it fits the plot, and is a satisfying comeuppance for the villain-king. That event can absolutely happen, it just happens once the camera cuts to the next scene. | |||
Other examples could be raunchy flirting/sex between characters, cringey attempts at k-pop dance sequences, interrogation sequences, etc. We might agree that R-rated stuff absolutely happens in this world, but the gaming table is all PG/PG-13 stuff. | |||
= Deciding Lines and Veils = | |||
We should just be clear during our session 0 | |||
Revision as of 23:03, 20 September 2023
Lines
These are the lines-in-the-sand. It's something we agree upon as a group and decide on the things that simply do not exist in our campaign world. The point is to get together and play a fun fantasy game, not be weighed down the the ethical dilemmas from our everyday lives.
The big obvious ones are:
- No slavery
- Things can become problematic in this regard, since it can be easy to slide into the comedy of hiring
slavesunpaid interns. Some fantasy worlds we might decide to completely side step by saying slavery doesn't exist in this universe, other worlds we might decide slavery exists in the backdrop of reality but our campaign won't have anything to do with it, and yet others we might decide slavery exists and our characters are driven to liberate the enslaved. In any case, a line is drawn where we/our characters will not be the enslavers, regardless of how many unpaid interns we might like to have on staff.
- Things can become problematic in this regard, since it can be easy to slide into the comedy of hiring
- no rape/sexual assault
- obvious reasoning here, too real for fantasy and has no place at the gaming table.
- no bigotry (racism/homophobia/transphobia/sexism/etc)
- Things become a gray area with characters having a variety of ancestries, and how other characters within the world might react to certain ancestries. An easy way to handle this is generally characters might find it unusual to see certain ancestries in certain areas, but have no fears about them reductive opinions about their ancestry.
- etc
Campaign-specific ones:
But we might decide, as a group to draw some lines to things like: no stealing or no bloodshed.
For the no stealing/no bloodshed type of examples: it might be because we have personal, IRL, convictions surrounding it
Or, in an interesting twist, it might be story-related such as playing a campaign. Maybe we are all clerics and champions of a goody two-shoes diety where we took an oath to never lie, steal, or draw blood. The party then has to use clever roleplaying and problem-solving to find ways through all encounters and combats with non-lethal attacks and such.
Veils
These are the things we decide can happen, they just happen "off-camera" behind a veil.
An easy example: maybe not everyone wants to see a player roleplay with the GM through a scene where the barbarian beats the crap out of the hog-tied villain-king for information, but everyone at the table absolutely agrees it fits the plot, and is a satisfying comeuppance for the villain-king. That event can absolutely happen, it just happens once the camera cuts to the next scene.
Other examples could be raunchy flirting/sex between characters, cringey attempts at k-pop dance sequences, interrogation sequences, etc. We might agree that R-rated stuff absolutely happens in this world, but the gaming table is all PG/PG-13 stuff.
Deciding Lines and Veils
We should just be clear during our session 0