Safety Tools: Before the X-Card
This is a two part series on safety tools. If what you play are really mechanic-first wargames or wargame-style games where pretty much the only thing you do is strategize to get to a goal or engage in combat, or really straightforward dungeon crawls with bad guys and traps and puzzles, this is probably not going to be useful to you. If the games you run are more narrative, they have elements of relationships between the players or with NPCs, if they deal with emotional themes in any capacity - death of a loved one, the mental implications of failure, having to make difficult moral choices - that kind of thing - then this video will be useful. I’m not saying one is better than the other - just that they need different things to be ‘done well’ as a GM.
Now when some people hear ‘safety tools’ a lot of folks instantly bristle because ‘My table, my rules, and if people don’t like it they can leave’; or ‘we’re all adults’ but I think maybe these folks think that if you’re using these things, you’re turning the game into something unrecognizable when really, it’s not anything like that. In fact, you’re probably already doing it without realizing there’s a word for it. It’s just being thoughtful about yourself and your players. It’s literally - hey, my dad just died so can we kind of glaze over any paternal interactions for a bit in the game, I’m still feeling kind of heavy about it. Or like ‘I’m super not into hearing about the bard fucking his way through every bar we’re at. Can we just fade to black or something when he finds someone to hook up with?’ Or if someone at the table starts describing the visceral torture of someone, and someone else is like ‘ew, ok we get it, can we just move on please?’ - those are literally a veil, a line, and an x-card respectively. Calling it ‘safety tools’ is just giving it a name, it’s really not something to get bristley about, and it is not always about trauma - sometimes its just an ick factor. I highly doubt that the people who’d benefit from understanding that will watch this video, so I am going to ask you, gentle viewer, when this comes up and if someone bristles, remind them that they are probably already doing it, and it’s not this big invasive thing that’s going to make their games unrecognizable.
Before we talk about the mechanical tools you can use, I want to make a note of something key: As a GM, you’re thinking about the table a whole LOT more than your players are and you generally have an idea of what you want the game to be, so to you, you have an idea of what safety tools mean and how you want them to be used. However, players - even veteran ones who may not have been exposed to this kind of thing before - may not really know how to engage with them a lot of times, so the onus really is on you to give them some direction.
That starts with creating a space of trust. And like I know that may sound like some hokey psychobabble bullshit but I promise you if you do this, you’ll actually be able to go a little harder if you want because your players trust you to put their security first. The biggest thing is creating a space where it is alright for people to say no to you. It doesn’t seem like it but honestly, saying no or advocating for yourself is stupidly difficult for most people. Like, you wouldn’t think it would be, and it definitely shouldn’t be, but it definitely is.
And think about it - is that what you, the GM, want? Someone who’s just going along with you because they’re too afraid to say no?
If that’s honestly something that is not only okay with you but something you seek out, I really, really don’t think you’ll get anything out of watching my videos, and you should probably just leave and not come back.
Anyway - so it’s hard for people to say no - First let’s go through a few reasons why. I’m a big believer in ‘a problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.’
One reason is that they don’t want to upset you. They think saying no will make you think less of them or be upset with them or whatever. This is honestly the thing I personally struggle with the most.
Especially if you are part of any marginalized group, women and women of colour especially, you’ve been taught to just ‘go along’ as best you can. Especially when there’s a male authority figure involved. It’s not about being submissive, it’s about ‘don’t make waves, don’t call attention to yourself, that’s how you get the people in charge to respect you.’ We’re not here today to talk about the realities of institutional and generational racism, that’s another video, but I do want you to know where your players may be coming from. And this isn’t just people of colour - this is any white person - any person really, with any kind of anxiety or neurodivergence or even something as uncomplicated as they just don’t know you that well and they aren’t comfortable with you yet. So they think saying no will make you mad, and it’s probably their own shit that’s making that happen, but it may also be the environment you’ve created. Think about a time a player has challenged you on something in front of the group - how did it go? Whatever the answer is, that’s the blueprint for how the other players are looking at you now.
Tangential to this, they think not saying no shows a willingness to be engaged and commit. You don’t want to be seen as ‘the difficult one’ who’s not a team player. You’ll be the lone dissonant voice. Everyone else is fine with it, why can’t you just man up? This is especially true if you have even mild anxiety. You’re convinced everyone else is fine but you’re the only dumb asshole to have any kind of issue so just… get over it.
So you’re probably hearing a theme - It all sort of boils down to the same thing - they don’t want to be a problem player and they’ve convinced themselves advocating for themselves or letting you know they may have things that make them uncomfortable is somehow that. But you have to let them know that it’s not.
And I know the organic reaction is to be like ‘Well it’s on them. It’s on them to say no!’ And yes, it is, you’re not wrong to think that, but if they don’t feel like it’s something they can do without repercussions, they won’t. If someone isn’t comfortable saying no to you, it’s not on them even though it may seem that way - it’s on you. That person sees the space you’ve created as something where they cannot advocate for themselves without belittling you, and they don’t want to do that.
So you need to find a way to create an environment where your players feel like it would be okay to say no to you. I’m using the term ‘say no’ - what I really mean is ‘exerting agency and feeling like it’s okay to be empowered and have boundaries.” There is a lot of power in enabling that for someone. Making them feel like yes, they do have control and don’t have to overcommit or expose themselves to discomfort to make you happy. And the thing is if you have a regular group that you play with, you’re probably don’t need to make any sweeping changes to your game- you’ve probably already gotten a strong cadence. But if you feel like the communication could be better, or if you are starting a new group, or even if you generally find human behaviour interesting - this is something to think about.
So obviously every group and table is different, so while my overall goal is just to say to you - think about this, I do want to share some specific things you can do outside of using formal safety tools if the concept behind safety tools is important to you. And to reiterate, that is making sure people feel like they are respected and validated. Safety Tools are just the way the enable that in a consistent way.
In addition though, if these are people you regularly game with, and the game has emotional arcs -
Check in frequently, privately. This doesn’t have to be a big thing, just a DM online or something. And you can just say ‘hey I just wanted to check in on how you’re feeling about the game’ - having these personal conversations allow you to avoid generalizations and makes it easier to build empathy and connection. The personal conversation organically puts your relationship first which makes trust easier to develop. And trust is the biggest thing thats needed for someone to feel comfortable establishing a boundary.
Be appreciative. You should be calling out players, privately, in game and above the table for awesome stuff they’ve done. This is fairly important to do but it goes double for if the player has mentioned something uncomfortable - like they didn’t know how to engage something you put in front of them, or they didn’t like the way a certain decision was made. It is way harder but letting your players know that you appreciate and value openness, even if it’s something that challenges you, is a step to building that trust and learning what is important to them.
And last but not least - Be open-minded. The therapy word for this is ‘vulnerable’ but all it is is being open to new experiences, uncertainty, new truths and lived experiences. It can and does feel uncomfortable because you are not accustomed to it. But you gotta ‘trial by fire’. You have to be brave and put yourself out there and maybe talk about your own shit and seek these things out. There’s a reason it’s called growing pains or teething pains - because even though it may be uncomfortable now, it is going to make you a better GM and a better person in really meaningful ways. Every time you open up instead of close yourself off, you’re working towards being better. To paraphrase a song from Book of Mormon, “This is what real manning up is about.”
I’ve been talking about gaming but this is really broad recommendations for all parts of your life. Be the person that other people feel empowered around. And you’ll find that, somewhat paradoxically, the easier it is for your players to say no, the more they’ll say yes. It’s because now they have what the ‘no’ was driving to all along - a sense of control in the situation. That’s all anyone wants. To know they have agency.
