Another way to interpret this would be that people are becoming increasingly comfortable with telling people they're not comfortable with something, and leaving when others at the table are refusing to take the feelings of others into consideration.
> We're talking about playing a boardgame with friends, do we really need to have a trigger-warning session?
D&D isn't always played with friends. Not that many of my friends play D&D, or are interested in; most of the people I've played with were strangers to me when we first began playing.
> Every time I hang out with my friends should we update our daily list of no-no words first?
You likely have this list in your head already for your friends; it's not necessary to explicitly rehash it because you've built a relationship with these people, and you know not to brag about your awesome trip with your dad in front of someone who's dad died last week.
But when you're meeting new people, you don't know what they've gone through. That's why it's better to be explicit at the start of this.
Personally I find it useful when I first meet someone because I can mark them as someone to avoid. Life is far too short to voluntarily walk on eggshells all the with emotionally crippled people who are constantly looking for things to be offended about. This goes double for when it comes to playing long sessions of D&D or any other sort of free-form game.
Not only did new management make these ridiculous changes to the core structure of the game, they recently threw Gary Gygax (who had more creativity and talent in his pinkie finger than any of them) and other founders under the bus. Fortunately nobody is prevented from getting old editions of D&D and playing a worthwhile game, or simply moving to GURPS or Runequest.
Personally I find it useful when I first meet someone like this because I can mark them as someone to avoid. Life is far too short to voluntarily walk on eggshells all the with emotionally crippled people who are constantly looking for things to be offended about. This goes double for when it comes to playing long sessions of D&D or any other sort of free-form game.
Not only did new management make these ridiculous changes to the core structure of the game, they recently threw Gary Gygax (who had more creativity and talent in his pinkie finger than any of them) and other founders under the bus. Fortunately nobody is prevented from getting old editions of D&D and playing a worthwhile game, or simply moving to GURPS or Runequest.
Yet another way to interpret this is we’re increasingly catering to narcissists who think that their personal feelings and sensitivities should override the norms and conventions of the group. Your example highlights the problem. You don’t need to tell people to tip toe around someone’s dad having died because that’s a generally recognized social norm.
That’s what it comes down to. People want to just be able to target their behavior to a general, objective social norm, without customizing it for myriad individual sensitivities. That’s a good approach. Don’t do anything that transgresses the social norm. Don’t be offended by anything that complies with the social norm.
But herein lies the problem. There is no general, objective social norm that covers the range of topics necessary.
Social norms are regional, cultural, familial, situational, etc. If you were to optimize for some universal standard, the result would be pretty boring. Think: “what would be appropriate in a corporate workplace?”.
Learning to navigate this as a group seems like a rather reasonable and necessary social skill for everyone involved. People who bristle at those with certain sensitivities seem to be masking sensitivities of their own and would prefer to just avoid a potentially uncomfortable conversation.
And I’ve gotta be blunt: many gamers (tabletop and otherwise) are often all too eager to blow right past norms or are unaware of them completely, which leads to recommendations like the above being helpful/necessary.
I’m pretty sure people happily played board games together in the recent past without these conversations.
Now that we're laying out these kinds of guidelines, maybe the people who legitimately don't understand why that's bad will stop and listen to what others have to say, and the ones who don't will be showing that they're deliberately ignoring how they make other people feel.
No, but I do need to tell them that my dad died in order for them to know. Otherwise, the GM just might bring my PC's dad up out of the past, and kill him in front of my PC again.
That's all that "the form" or Session Zero is. It's explicitly laying out things that you may be sensitive to, so that the rest of the group can continue to behave in that general, objective social norm you're talking about. It's a way for them to let me know that their dog died last week, so that I know that the first combat of the first session shouldn't be fighting a bunch of guard hounds.
First, it's not a "boardgame." It's a Role Playing Game. It's much more unbounded than a board game and you are actually playing. Not just rolling dice but acting and imagining and adding to the experience. You play your character and you decide how that character acts.
> do we really need to have a trigger-warning session?
You could have one. Generally cover strong NOs and decide on hot-topics that often make people uncomfortable:
racism/slavery, romance/sex, phobias, etc.
Then setup a system to halt if anything new comes up.
People throw around "trigger" and "safe-space" like they're above feeling anything but sometimes it's just being considerate. It's not just about language but situations.
We play D&D to have fun. For some, that means "leaving politics out of it" but for others, those "politics" impact our actual daily lives. To pretend they don't exist or to have to interact with them in a game can be just as un-fun.
> And when does that end? Every time I hang out with my friends should we update our daily list of no-no words first?
Now you're being facetious. You communicate like people. That's it.
If someone was recently mugged in real-life, you probably wouldn't have their character get attacked by a rogue. If someone had arachnophobia, you probably wouldn't drop down the RPG-cliche giant spider. If someone has to deal with real-life racism, you could probably understand why "knife-ears" wouldn't feel fun. OR maybe they're all okay. It's all about opt: opt-in and opt-out.
> oupled with that we are increasingly unable to fluidly deal with differences this creates as they arise.
I think that's a YOU-issue. My friend group is a complex group of people, and yet we find a way to have fun every week with D&D while also respecting all members of the game.
Listen, your game, your rules 100%
But I will say, the Free Parking house rule is why most games of Monopoly take so freaking long. (And if you're fine with that, then that's fine too!). The fees and fines are meant to take money out of the player's pockets and drive them closer to bankruptcy so the dang game CAN end.
Unfortunately, it's a game that just feels bad. You either play as-is and it feels bad to go broke. or you house-rule and the money keeps circulating until someone builds all Hotels and completely obliterates someone when they land on the third and fourth-edge properties
(Also, it's far more common that you will be doing this with a group of people you've only just met, but in general I think such games should lean more towards the lighter side)