Experiences with the X-card in gaming?

The Game Room
21

Yeah–the player that used it didn’t actually say “X card,” he said something like “Play a nope card,” or “I’m gonna nope that.”

There’s “not fun” and then there’s “not fun.” If a player is taking too long with their turn, or using a goblin voice that I find grating, or looking at their phone during the scene description, or slurping their coffee, or refusing to speak in character, all that might make the game less fun for me–but it’d be a dick move to X-card that, IMO.

But in this case, murdering an innocent bystander simply in a fit of pique instantly makes that PC a sociopathic villain, and our lighthearted romp of a game becomes something very different. If we don’t immediately turn on that PC, dropping everything to stop him and abandoning our mission, we’re complicit in a gruesome sex murder and mutilation. No phobia or PTSD is involved, but it turns the last couple of hours into laughing with a bunch of friends into “Jesus, what have we become?”

I think gdave’s example is pretty cool. For myself, I can totally see playing a scenario where we kill a bunch of evil US soldiers and don’t think twice about it, and I’d not even think about whether some other player would take it personally. But if I found out we’d played through the scenario and it made a player feel shitty, I’d really regret that. Being able to say, “Hold up, y’all, this isn’t fun for me” would be important there, and I’d be 100% willing to change the game to keep it fun.

Similarly, I have a player in my regular game who freaking hates the idea of fighting animals. Killing animals makes it so un-fun for her that even a giant undead squid is a little on the squicky side. I’ve adjusted my scenarios so there aren’t times when straight up animals are combat enemies–or at least, there are alternatives to killing them. No worries; now that I know this, I can adjust.

22

I work on the assumption that the X-Card is being used in a good faith manner rather than being abused.

I’ve got no problem with the player saying that this wasn’t fun. As a DM, I’ve learned the hard way that I need to balance player agency against a character’s action ruining the fun for everyone else in the group. I would welcome a player saying, “Dude, this isn’t that kind of game.”

If I was running the scenario and you played an X-Card I would skip the scene. But I’d have no idea why we were skipping the scene as this is Deadlands and we likely played all sorts of shootout scenes before this one. And with the X-Card, you don’t have to tell me why you played it and I’m not even supposed to ask. It’s understood that the scene will end and you don’t have to tell me why.

Do you really need an X-Card for this?

23

@Odesio,

I’m not going to try to respond to your post point-by-point. I will say that you’re right that a major element of the X-Card is that the person who “plays” it doesn’t have to have a conversation about why.

As to the rest, I’m not an advocate, I’ve never personally used explicit tools like the X-Card, and I’m not going to argue with you about their use.

I just wish you fun and safe gaming :slightly_smiling_face:.

24

An X-card could always be avoided by forthright speech among the play group. But sometimes it’s hard for a player to break play. This is especially true for players less familiar with the group. Having the card shows that it’s always okay to stop problematic play. Think of it as a pressure valve to prevent things from getting out of hand.

25

I think you’re maybe reading too much into the “doesn’t have to explain” part of the concept. I think they mean, 'You don’t have to explain why it’s offensive to you," not “You don’t have to explain what’s offensive to you.” The point is that you don’t have to justify not liking a particular kind of content, not to make the GM play, “Guess what I find offensive?”

That’s sort of the point of the X-card: it establishes up front that you’re okay with people saying that, and gives them an explicit way to signal that they want to speak up, without having to worry about how to broach the subject.

26

That is not how the X-Card is commonly interpreted on other messages boards where discussion of its use in role playing games comes up. And I’m including advocates who argue in favor of the use of X-Cards. So, no, I don’t think I’m reading too much into it. Though in most scenes it will likely be obvious why someone played the X-Card.

There’s no discussion expected. We are immediately changing the scene or skipping it altogether. If that isn’t what the author intends then they need to be a bit more clear. It’s important that everyone understands how a safety tool is to be used.

Why do you need the X-Card for that?. I don’t believe the X-Card was created for the purpose of being able to communicate that you don’t like something. It was designed as a safety tool similar to the safe word adopted by BDSM enthusiast.

27

Having played at some tables where the X-Card was offered (though I’ve never seen it actually invoked), my understanding has always been “no explanation is needed, and no judgment will be made.” I understand, and support this – a player shouldn’t be expected to have to explain why an element of the story makes them uncomfortable, or defend their request to have it changed.

But, if a player is invoking the X-Card to have an element of the scene changed, for whatever reason, I, as a GM, would at least need to have an explanation as to what needs to be changed, or if the entire scene needs to be ended then and there; I suspect that most GMs would agree with this.

I can see how the quote from that article may or may not have been crystal-clear in this regard.

28

When I run horror games I ask the players to tell me what they absolutely don’t want included in the game. For example, we’ll never play out a scene were a sexual assault takes place because that’s not something I want to have in the game. And I make it clear that I don’t need to know why they don’t want something in the game. I just need to know that they don’t want it.

29

odesio, you may be interpreting the “X-card” in the title more literally than others are, or than I meant it. In my example, there was no x-card, literal or pre-discussed. I’m talking more about the general principle of stopping a game to talk about what’s making it not fun for people. If you only want to talk about the literal, formal structure, or if you think it’s silly to discuss this as a general principle, I’m afraid the thread may not be of interest to you.

30

I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to expect a thread titled “Experiences with the X-Card in gaming” to be about the X-Card in gaming. But I’ll bow out.

31

It just seems really obvious that the intent there is to avoid making the person who activated the card have to justify why they don’t like something. It’s to avoid stuff like, “Let me explain to you why this rape scene is narratively justified.” It doesn’t seem reasonable that the intent is to leave the GM in the dark about what element in the game was objectionable, if for no other reason than it makes it more likely that the objectionable element will show up again later on.

Maybe there are people arguing differently on other message boards. I can’t really respond to arguments I haven’t read.

32

I’m familiar with the concept but never used it and never participated in a game that used it. I strongly suspect my group wouldn’t really be amenable to the idea; not because we have a bunch of objectionable themes but more because we don’t and it feels a little like wearing a bike helmet to walk down the hallway: You’re not hurting anything but it still seems like a pointless exercise for show.

We have a Session Zero and talk about game tone and perhaps any major themes (Hey, this gonna be a horror game with usual horror stuff) and players can decide if they want to participate or not. My players don’t act like sociopaths through their characters (torture, rape, etc) and we don’t include overt or explicit descriptions of that stuff in game.

I wouldn’t be put off or mad if I joined a table and they said they were using it but I don’t see it really every having a place at our regular tables.

As for it’s usage, I’ve had conversations online about that and the consensus is that a player would use it to tap out of a scene, the GM would handwave the rest past it without putting the player on the spot and afterwards the player would want to explain (in whatever detail) their actual complaint so the DM knows if the scene about punching spider-ghosts was about the spiders, the ghosts, the animal cruelty or what and can avoid those themes in the future. It’s all pretty common sense.

33

I’ve played in several games where the X-card has been out, and used. It was always used as a “Stop” - “We’re going back to the start of the scene”- “Now, what actually happened was…” kind of thing (so very much like Script Change, which I’ve also encountered), and much, much more directed at GM actions than other player actions. At least at our local cons, teams for modules are usually made of players who already know each other, and their usual DM is then randomly assigned to another team. So it’s usually group/DM mismatch that leads to X-carding, not in-party actions.

We also use something similar to it in LARPs now. We’ve always had the “Freeze” call (and bell or airhorn), but that’s always been seen as a GM thing, and only for gameplay/plot reasons. Now we make it clear to players that they can stop a scene if they’re uncomfortable, with the same “Freeze” call, as well as a standing “I exit the scene” rule for less critical personal withdrawals, where the scene can continue.

Most of the players I interact with nowadays are younger and very diverse in race & gender & sexuality. Don’t know if that factors into how acceptable X-carding etc is.

34

I suspect it does. Gaming definitely has its own Sad Puppies contingent, mostly older white dudes simultaneously fearful and contemptuous of anything new. The X-card stuff I’ve seen isn’t from teenagers, but it’s definitely from folks who are more interested in diversity in gaming in general.

There were times in the nineties where we crossed the line in LARPing, just in terms of describing some vampire horror shit in greater gory detail than was necessary, and I’m pretty sure it made the game unfun for some other players. I wish we’d had a “Freeze” or similar mechanic back then.

35

I think I’ve been fairly lucky in that the gaming in Cape Town I’ve been involved in has always been very women-led and queer-friendly, even in the late 80s-90s, which gave a very different dynamic to lots of other places, from what I hear about them. Cuts down (but doesn’t eliminate) a lot of the immature-teenage-boy-in-Comic-Book-Guy’s-body type behaviour/playstyle I gather has been quite prevalent elsewhere.

36

Speaking as a mostly older white dude who is often simultaneously fearful and contemptuous of anything new:

What’s new is the formalization, explication, and specific terminology.

On an informal basis, I can remember players calling “time out” all the way back in the Dark Ages of the 1980s. That wasn’t any sort of formal or pre-agreed-upon mechanic, it was just a widely shared idiom/norm. We also talked about content and subject matter, albeit in a very ad hoc way, and it’s true that we didn’t specifically make a point to discuss it before every campaign, much less every session. The “take-back” goes all the way back to the wargames which RPGs grew out of. Of course, back then it would have been due to a misunderstanding of the rules or a tactical flub, but we did roleplaying “take-backs” and “re-dos” in the 1980s, as well.

Which is all to say, again, that pretty much none of the modern “safety tools” are really even new - they’re practices that were around since the earliest days of the hobby. But now they’re being formalized and brought to the front as explicit elements of of the social contract of gaming, instead of lurking implicitly in the background, where they were all too often ignored.

Now, I personally think that some specific safety tools (like that “Consent Flower” on the page I linked to upthread) can be overly-intrusive and doofy. But that’s a specific implementation, not an objection to the general concept. And I’ve never actually played with it, so, who knows? A lot of objections I’ve seen to “safety tools” are similar sorts of theory-crafting rather than actual play experiences.

And as much of a grognard as I am, I’m also personally glad to see the hobby growing - it’s in a new golden age, with tons of new, high quality material. “Safety tools” seem like a trivial price to pay for all the great new stuff I get to play with (or, y’know, not play with, since there’s sooo much RPG material now that I have way too many cool-looking games sitting on my shelf that I’ve never been able to get to the table…).

37

I should caveat that as a 47-year-old white dude, I’m definitely hashtag notalloldwhitedudes. It’s just, some of the folks who started the hobby get real weird about the hobby changing.

That’s the thing that not all grognards feel, for sure.

38

If Cape Town doesn’t have a vibrant Vampire LARP community, that seems like a huge missed opportunity.

39

:laughing: Took me a minute.

40

Ha Ha!.

There did used to be quite an active MET group in the 90s-00s, but they were an abberation - we are much more of a bespoke parlour LARP scene.