Thread 96006107

What's actually the point of safety tools like those cards you pull out to show the GM that you're uncomfortable with the material? Why not just say outright "hey, I don't really enjoy you taking me to your magical realm right now" or something like that? What's the point of wiggling a card around? It strikes me as something designed for people who don't know how to healthily communicate their grievances and disagreements towards each other.

>>96006107 (OP)
<3 neco arc chaos

Thast is exactly what they are for, people who aren't capable of communicating. that said, they only have a place in large scale tabletop with strangers who don't know one another. One would think that consistent groups know each other better, or at least can say, "Hey, fuck that shit."

it started as a convention play thing, since you're playing with strangers and none of you know what the other is used to
(however, I've never, ever seen them used or needed to be used, and I've been going to cons for like 15 years; con games are obviously really tame)
the problem is that it mutated from that space and became just another waste of a page to signal how good and virtuous you are for including it in your game

>>96006107 (OP)
Is a tool for running games with strangers usually at cons, they were created for kids with literal non-meme autismo which you could end up having on a public table.

>>96006107 (OP)
I've read that the safety tool shit was part of an entire guide of how to conduct a safe and respectful game, with about 99% of it being "no shit duh" levels of obvious advice like talking out what will/won't work before the game starts or being willing to call time outs if someone isn't feeling well. The safety tools were just a suggestion for alternative ways to do the above for like if someone had a communicative disorder or if it was a League game that didn't allow time for properly sitting down and talking out your problems.

And naturally, grifters only saw an opportunity to sell people shit they didn't need, so pretended that there was a big "communication" problem over the entirety of the hobby that only their silly X-card shit could fix it. That's all it ever was, a band-aid to slap over a communication issue that can be solved by acting like adults.

>>96006107 (OP)
Because when you say things, other people might respond back, and we can't have that

This discussion has already been done to death and why it doesn't work. The real noteworthy thing was being told "how it doesn't affect you" only for it to do, in fact, affecting me.

>>96006107 (OP)
They're for teenagers whose hormones are out of control turning them into gibbering buffoons who can't manage themselves in social situations. That's why that section of the book is always right next to "what is a roleplaying game?" It's for people who have never played one before, are probably in their retarded-teen-hormones phase, and don't understand how to behave properly in social situations.

>>96006107 (OP)
On paper it goes like this
>not everyone is good at communication and confrontation
>some people have unspoken traumas, issues, and phobias
>RPGs tend to cover a wide variety of material, which may step on some toes
>safety tools are meant to be a non-confrontational way of preempting or circumventing any particularly uncomfortable situations where feelings might be hurt or the game may become less enjoyable.

In practice it goes like this
>years of tumblrized pseudo-intellectual faux academic bullshit has created a class of useless busybodies who make up solutions to problems that don't exist and then go looking for people they can con into believing that there is a huge problem they need to fix.
>useful idiots and weak-willed faggots buy into the belief that hiring consultants and advisors and putting safety tools in things is good and works and is saving the hobby from itself
>Even people who evangelize for safety tools struggle to use them naturally, as the typical "just talk to them" method usually does more than enough to set the tone and expectations of a game
>At the very best, they're extremely elaborate and cumbersome ways to avoid problems that can be alleviated by saying "can we dial it back?"
>At worst, they're elaborate and cumbersome attempts to virtue signal at a corporate and personal level

>>96006428
On paper it goes like this:
>simple tool

In practice it goes like this:
>No one really needs or uses these tools
>People obsessed with identity politics endlessly sperg and spill their spaghetti freaking out about the tools on the internet

>>96006460
If something is stupid and cumbersome people are going to make fun of it for being stupid and cumbersome. This has nothing to do with identity politics and everything about retards being retards online. You are just trying to say its about politics to get people to shut up about it.

>>96006488
>If something is stupid and cumbersome people are going to make fun of it for being stupid and cumbersome.
That's not what you were "making fun of it" for. You were making fun of the people who your identity politics lead you to virtue signal yourself as being different from.

>>96006503
You're gaslighting yourself again to be "correct" and to put imaginary labels on people to attack easier. Goodbye.

>>96006557
Bye bye buddy. Maybe >>>/pol/ is more your style with all your seething rage for
>pseudo-intellectuals
>faux academics
>useless busybodies
>useful idiots
>weak-willed faggots
>people who evangelize
And all those other things you're talking about in your post that I was "gaslighting" you about.

>>96006460
Yeah, but it is identity politics. It's all sprung from the same fucking root of Critical Theory, which insists that there are problems everywhere and the only to do about it is to bitch as loudly as possible and convince other people that they need to curtail or alter their behavior, or society at large, to combat these imaginary problems.

>Muh /pol!/
In case we needed any more proof

>>96006605
Critical theory is a tool of sociological investigation used by professional researchers and academics. No: that's not about identity politics. Read a book?

>>96006107 (OP)
Honest question: what do you get out of making a bait thread? What's the point?

>>96006621
Not a bait thread, I was genuinely curious since there was a blurb about it in the Alien Second Edition playtest that I don't remember from the first edition rulebook and I thought it was kinda silly. Now in retrospect I do kinda regret this thread since it's just devolving into retarded American identity politics shit but at least some anons answered my question with the whole convention thing.

>>96006107 (OP)
I dont want someone to have to say
>"please stop this reminds me of when my gym teacher touched my butthole"
At the gaming table. I dont think you need physical objects nesessarily, but you should respect that some people have been through stuff and have ways to help them manage that

>>96006644
For what it's worth, anon, a lot of people compare these safety tools to the same ones the BDSM sex community promotes, so take that for what you will

>>96006614
>The study of society is not the study of society!

>>96006644
>Nooooooo it's totally not a bait thread! I've totally never seen the weekly fucking threads that get posted on here about the exact same topic and I don't know how to use Google or Bing or Alta Vista, or search the archive, I absolutely have to post this shit here so we can have the exact same conversation, again and again and again!

Fuck off.

A while back some absolute weirdos in influential positions decided to push BDSM consent charts into literally every new place they could fit it. /tg/ was just one of them.
This is literally based on the systems they used to alert people if you wanted to be pissed on at orgies.

>>96006684
>My arguments are getting BTFO, so this must be a bait thread!

>>96006614
>professional researchers
Not at all. It is useless to real research
>academics
Yes, because it is a framework for appearing smart without having to be smart, and the vast majority of academics are not smart.

>>96006672
>I can't follow the conversation so I'll post greentexts!
I noticed.

>>96006107 (OP)
You know who’s mostly playing RPG’s now, right? This stuff is like crack for their intended audience.

I spent a week getting my ear talked off about how a guy’s homebrew DND game was “participating in the tradition of asking us to redefine our idea of being alive”. Of course, his idea of “new life” was half-baked at best.

This faggot couldn’t even go into a C-store without having a panic attack.

This is the kind of person that uses X cards. There are more of them than you.

>>96006696
It's frequently used to produce peer-reviewed research in scientific journals, anon. You might wanna try more learning and less identity politics.

>>96006644
The total mismatch in tone from the sperg who is angry that anyone can dislike safety tools for any reason should be a good enough example of the kind of person who values safety tools, and why everyone else dislikes them. The condescending, smug, pseudo-intellectual sneers and gnashes his teeth at you when you dare to tell him something he feels vaguely associated with, because it has a false air of intellectualism, is worthless garbage.

>>96006707
It absolutely does not. It's not the scientific method. It's a political lens for bitching about society, you unbelievable brainlet.

>>96006644
How the fuck do you play an Alien RPG with an X card? The entire setting is based on people being raped and forcibly impregnated with lizard/insect babies.

I like to think I’m a pretty resilient person, and I want to raise an X card just thinking about that shit.

>>96006713
I think the worst thing about these people is how they never admit who they are and what side they are on. It's always just "centrist" at best or trying to claim its just how things naturally are at worst. You can tell who they truly are with what they argue for and how they argue. It's like at this point they know being anywhere near the "left" is a dirty word just like communism and socialism.

>>96006719
>It absolutely does not
Well that's just flatly, factually wrong. Here's a pretty famous peer-reviewed paper using it published by the NIH: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19537235/

Just in case you wanna become a little less ignorant.

>>96006107 (OP)
>something designed for people who don't know how to healthily communicate their grievances and disagreements towards each other
That's pretty much it's intended purpose. The problem is that a lot of safety tool ideas are pointlessly convoluted to the point of totally defeating their original purpose.
Being able to just flash a card is a lot less confrontational than directly asking the group to stop for a moment. But for the card to even work in the first place, you have to explain to everyone how it works, and get everyone to be onboard with it. Which is already more communication than someone who doesn't know how to communicate is comfortable with. So by that point, you might as well just talk things out normally.

>>96006689
I didn't make any arguments. I asked of why they made a bait thread, and they refused to answer. I just want to know what someone gets out of posting
>hEy GuYs I aM nEw To Tg WhAt ArE tHeSe CrAzY xCaRdS i KeEp HeArInG aBoUt?
over and over and over and over again.

>>96006107 (OP)
I never seen this (I don't live in America)

>>96006740
Do you think sociological studies are "Critical Theory"?

>>96006740
>the government uses it so it must be correct

Lol. Lmao, even.
In all seriousness, it’s less a scientific tool and more of a representation of how we see ourselves and our own flaws. Every society has its own version of it.

I won’t deny that it can have its uses, but to treat it as concrete fact is downright silly. Take that shit outside of the modern US and it breaks down pretty quickly.

>>96006751
Mexico or Brazil?

>>96006758
>to treat it as concrete fact is downright silly.
To erect strawmen to argue against is even dumber. Who the hell said the thing that you're pretending you responded to?

>>96006760
Balkans

>>96006765
It’s as useful as any other societal zeitgeist for analyzing the culture that holds it as truth.

It’s just not going to work for everything. I’ve seen some nutters try to use Critical Theory to justify not enforcing their childrens’ bedtimes because it was “parental oppression”.

There’s a difference between use and worship. Trying to cram it into your DND group will have highly mixed results.

>>96006107 (OP)
Shitposting aside, I like the idea of the players (DM included) having tools to affect that game outside of the context of the game itself. Ryuutama gives the DM a set of 4 skills they can use to affect the story one per session each, the nameless yugioh ttrpg gives the players and DM 3 single-use abilities per side, and the idea of meta currency is kinda shit in practice but falls into the same ballpark. The x card as a PC-side fuck that that can be used once a session if enough players agree on using it could be fun

>>96006665
Honestly, with that in mind it's probably more useful for a LARP than a tabletop RPG.
>>96006696
As someone who does STEM you really shouldn't underestimate the humanities anon. STEM people are legit both the most boring people on earth and some of the most insane people out there. If you just do STEM without the humanities you get people like Curtis Yarvin advocating for turning "undesirables" into biodiesel.
>>96006728
To be fair, what other people find uncomfortable is gonna differ a lot. Alien is definitely going for the whole rape/unwanted and forced pregnancy angle as part of it's body horror but not everyone is gonna find that disturbing, especially since it's covered in a layer of creature feature abstraction.
>>96006749
I told you why I asked anon. I don't hang around here much anymore because I don't like how the culture of the board and the site at large has changed over the years but I occasionally pop in here. If this is something retards come in to bait about I apologize, I just thought it was weird seeing it in the playtest.
>>96006824
Is the Yugioh mechanic supposed to emulate the heart of the cards?

>>96006856
For what it's worth anon, on the assumption you're shooting straight, a lot of the backlash surrounding this X-card shit is because it's been drawn into the larger culture wars bs that's been going on. Namely that a lot of the bigger influencer names that push for this nonsense in tabletop games are very out and proud leftists who want to promote a culture of acceptance and safe fun, which is the kind of thing that should be something everyone wants until you realize how absolutely useless most X-cards are to the majority of tables. Especially cause one of the biggest promoters of them ended up in a situation where he dm'd a live-streamed game session and made his players uncomfortable with something vaguely sexual that nobody felt comfortable dealing with...aka the precise kind of situation the X-card was meant to stop.

Either way, if you talk to your table, then you're fine and don't need to worry about it further.

Then again, maybe my disdain comes from how I've experienced the spiritual opposite, gameplay mechanics in japanese ttrpgs that encourage player participation and encouraging the other players such as the chits from Tenra Bansho Zero, so I value communication between dms and players quite a bit.

>>96006788
>Expands strawman unrelated to anything anyone has said
Enjoy that, autistic anon.

>>96006856
>Is the Yugioh mechanic supposed to emulate the heart of the cards?
I looked it up in the comics and I misremembered some stuff.
>Yugi can interrupt turn flow and instantly make an action using his players (his former self and his court mages are all his player characters)
>As the DM, Bakura can reverse time to undo any single event, temporarily freeze time for Yugi's characters, and cause a natural disaster to increase the game's difficulty

>>96007112
Oh so it's an RPG based on Monster World? I assumed it was just gonna be something based on the anime where you'd be playing card games or something.

>>96007133
There were two rpg arcs in Yugioh. The first was Monster World. The second was basically a super advanced dark ritual that was halfway to a larp of the nameless Pharoah's last days as king, to basically allow the spirit of the Millennium Ring to try and undo his defeat and destroy Egypt once and for all. I presume that it's a reference to the latter.

>>96007133
>>96007145
Yeah, I was talking about the Dark RPG in the last arc. Monster World doesn't have stuff for players outside of character actions

>>96006856
>As someone who does STEM you really shouldn't underestimate the humanities anon.
The humanities overstate the importance the offer to all other fields, especially when it comes to anyone dense enough to think they have something of value to offer by peddling critical theory and marxist thought, specifically.

>>96007189
The humanities are a lot more than just "critical theory" and "Marxist thought" anon-kun.

>>96007251
Learn to read.

>>96007189
>I dismiss things I'm ignorant of
We noticed.

>>96007276
Ethics is incredibly important to STEM in general anon-kun. Philosophy and science has always gone hand in hand together in the west (they used to be considered the same thing) and the trend of dismissing the humanities in because it doesn't produce concrete results is a very recent thing. STEM without ethics leads to people making failed startups thinking they're much smarter than the plebs because they consider using engineering principles to solve sociological problems (actually retarded).

>>96006107 (OP)
People who come up with this shit are BDSM freaks and they need non-verbal safety tools when they play with gags.

It's not that your history and humanities is useless, it's just that its so corrupted that is basically useless now. I was self taught and my views of the world are completely different then some "educated" twat from L.A. If you were actually interested in history, philosophy and humanities you would already know this however.

>>96007365
Nnnhrrrmmm fffuuuhhh fphwwwuggg mmmmdddeeeuuuut

>>96007372
>I was self taught
Hahahaha. Can't wait to hear your take on atlantis and the batteries secretly beneath the pyramids, retard anon.

>>96007372
>some "educated" twat from L.A.
The world doesn't revolve around the US or California anon-kun.

>>96006107 (OP)
it's so that the GM/player doing the thing that makes others at the table uncomfortable doesn't have to think about if anything they're planning on doing will ruin the atmosphere at the table because "the X Card will stop it".
unfortunately for the others at the table, sociology is in effect and they are quite likely to compromise their own fun at the table for the sake of not flipping the table, either literally by actually interrupting the game or metaphorically by activating the X card.
ultimately, the only truly effective safety tool is everyone at the table engaging in a conversation about what they want out of the table and what they are bringing to it, or as /tg/ would say,
>Have you tried talking to your players/GM?

>>96007465
Sorry, I don't bother trying to make the distinction between California, the UK, Germany and France because they are all the same now.

>>96007514
>because they are all the same now.
Oh shit anon, sorry. I didn't know you where actually retarded.

>>96007310
I am begging you to learn to read. Specifically so you can learn what the phrase "especially when it comes to" implies.

>>96007527
>can't write they
>implies that the humanities specifically focus on "critical theory" and "marxist thought"
No anon, either you should reformat your sentence or you're mentally retarded.

>>96006824
>Ryuutama gives the DM a set of 4 skills they can use to affect the story one per session
Could you elaborate? Can't the DM always affect the 'story' in whatever way they want?

>>96006557
Completely irrelevant to the thread, but I thought this cat was a bird in the thumbnail and had to point out the shapeshifting/that I'm a retard

>>96008202
NTA, but I can try to answer that. In-game, the DM is represented as an actual GMPC that's basically a Dragon Guide, or a spirit that watches and records the player character's journey. Essentially like Gandalf if someone slapped his staff out of his hands, gave him a lute, and told him he's now the party's Bard. It basically gives the GM the chance to do minor things like give players an mulligan on bad rolls, or give them a minor benefit for doing something suited to their adventure. Ex.

>The Tale of Nostalgia
>If the PCs roleplay having nostalgia for home, they can ignore all negative effects of mind-based status effects for the rest of the session; this affects up to two PCs at once if they meet the conditions.

Note that the game says the Ryuujin's presence is explicitly optional, their capacity to use their powers is heavily limited, and emphasizes that the game's focus should always be on the player characters and not what the Ryuujin is doing for them. But yeah, that's what I believe it means when they say the DM is affecting the "story", since in this case it's the storyteller effectively nudging the dice once or twice to make the gameplay portion more fun for the players if they choose so.

>>96006107 (OP)
That one guy who raped the robot and got cancelled instead of carded killed it. If he couldn't even get his players to use the safety tools when he was one of the biggest proponents of the idea, then what good is it going to do anyone else?

>>96006684
>alta vista
Based boomer anon

>>96007557
It doesn't imply anything. Please, for the love of God, learn to read.

>>96006428
This.

>>96006614
it doesn't really mean anything because it comes loaded with tons of presumptions about societal conflict and social structures, and its main purported benefit in combining theory with practice is already supplanted by field study, which includes ethnographic observation and triangulation. Furthermore, its moreso associated with the sociologists who follow the school of thought founded by the 3 "founding fathers" sociology who see sociology not primarily as a form of knowledge creation and the goal of understading society, but to attain social change and goals. To everyone outside of sociology, especially those in the hard sciences, its not that hard to pinpoint how easy it is for Critical Theory to introduce threats to both external and internal validity due to the inherent sampling issue with praxis.
Also anon isn't wrong in that it literally is the precursor to critical race/gender theory.

>>96006107 (OP)
They are there so the corporate can say they are there. Nobody actually uses them and it's a severe sign on nogames to make a post about them.

>>96010549
>its main purported benefit in combining theory with practice is already supplanted by field study, which includes ethnographic observation and triangulation
The one doesn't "supplant" the other. They're used together.
>anon isn't wrong in that it literally is the precursor to critical race/gender theory.
Correct: the develop of tools often results in the development of even more tools.

>>96010693
>The one doesn't "supplant" the other. They're used together.
by "supplanted", I mean for the majority of sociologists who have epistemological humility and merely want better models for studying society. since, in that case they wouldn't need to include Critical Theory as the ensemble of other better-suited methods already cover all bases.
>Correct: the develop of tools often results in the development of even more tools.
that was anon's entire point though? that the ideas share the same "root" that originates from critical theory?

>>96010693
>this thing lead to this other thing that everyone else hates and can identify as a terrible idea
>ah, correct, but it was supposed to!
Yeah man that's the point. It's supposed to lead to terrible things everyone hates.

>>96006107 (OP)
autism. that's the only reason.

>>96006107 (OP)
it separates the chaff.

>>96007379
Well said!