Roleplaying Content and Consent (Patreon)

tl;dr: I discuss the planned content for the LAWhammer stream and provide the content consent checklist we used as a jpeg and a pdf.

I strongly believe that ensuring everyone playing at my roleplaying table is not only aware of the type of content that an upcoming game may include, but that we've also discussed if there are any areas of sensitivity for each player, and covered how we'll handle such areas of concern. 

This is uncontroversial these days. Most of us organise a session 0 and include a discussion of the type of content that's coming and whether anyone has any problems with it. And most of us also discuss how to deal with those issues should they arise during play.

In a similar fashion, if it's a convention game, most of us advertise such sessions with a content warning to make sure players who are sensitive to the scenario's planned subject matter or presentation style are properly informed before they expose themselves to something they may find difficult.

I personally feel this is not only a useful step to take before playing a game, it's an essential one. It can save a lot of discomfort, confusion, or heartache later. I've been playing RPGs since the 80s, and in that time I've made many GMing errors. Discussing content and ensuring all players understand what's coming can ensure some of these errors are never repeated.

So, for the LAWhammer game, I figured it was important to directly tackle this. Not just for the players in the campaign, but for all of you, too. After all, if our planned content is not up your street, it's better you know now rather than later.

To address everything, I whipped up a quick intro to the content that our actual play of The Enemy Within will cover. I then used that intro to build a consent checklist so all the players could mark down if they had concerns about different types of content.

Fancy a looksee at that? This is what I gave my players:

LAWHAMMER CONTENT CHECKLIST

The LAWhammer Content Checklist is a starting point for the conversation concerning how we will consensually engage with our online roleplaying game. The aim is to ensure everyone feels free, safe, and able to engage with the game without fear or concern. To ensure that, everyone needs an unintimidating channel to communicate their individual concerns and boundaries, and we need to engage with those as a group to ensure we are all happy.

Consent for the LAWhammer streams is an explicit goal rather than something that simply happens. It is an ongoing issue that is subject to change. It is not a one-off interaction. Everyone should be informed about what is expected and what everyone else agrees is acceptable.

Further, if there is any issue that you feel needs to be addressed, but you do not wish to communicate it to the group as a whole, tell Andy Law and he will ensure it is communicated anonymously with everyone so that we can reach a resolution.

Statement of Planned Content

The LAWhammer production of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay’s The Enemy Within campaign is an adult-facing stream that deals with mature content. Its core story involves tackling an existential threat to the Empire, one of the game’s primary realms. The nature of this threat is truly horrific, and sometimes the descriptions of this will be equally horrific.

Horror

LAWhammer includes horror of various forms, including body horror, comedy horror, psychological horror, supernatural horror, creature horror, and more besides.

Language

Swearing, often euphemistically with in-game equivalents for in-time portrayal, is common in LAWhammer. To support that, we have a Lexicon of Slang. There is an expectation that players will swear as often as they do in real-life interactions. We’re adults.

Violence

LAWhammer often involves extreme violence and description of bodies being torn apart by various weapons or creatures. It can be, and will be, bloody.

Mental Health

Lawhammer deals with how the mind copes with the harsh realities of facing the dark horrors the Warhammer world offers, and includes rules for Stress (EDIT: these will be posted on this blog soon), moments when the mind no longer copes with what it has witnessed. This can lead to mental trauma, and it can be long-lasting. The mental health issues will be handled sensitively and will not impact player agency beyond your personal preferences, but it is nevertheless frequently grim.

Physical Health

Characters in LAWhammer are often badly hurt, killed, and contract diseases. And, when it comes to supernaturally imposed inflictions, it can happen at a horrific pace.

Relationships

LAWhammer includes adult relationships of many kinds, including monogamy, polyamory, open relationships, friends with benefits, and much more besides. It also includes characters with many different sexualities and genders and has NPCs of multiple species openly reflecting the entire LGBTQIA+ rainbow. Sex is a part of the human condition and will be a part of the storytelling. The physical detail of sexual relationships occurs off-screen or with loose language, and may form the basis for some character interactions.

Cultural Issues

Many of the characters in LAWhammer are bigoted, racist, sexist, and worse. They do not reflect our views, but they do exist in-game and the conflicts they elicit form many core plot points.

***

So, with that all in place, it was time for the checklist. Many variations of checklists like these can be found online. The one I created for our game is pasted as a jpeg below and also attached as a pdf to this post just in case anyone else wants to use it or build their own from it. The content it includes is a mixture of the planned areas the campaign will cover and more general topics so that we could discuss our individual preferences for each just in case.

We each filled in the forms anonymously and then talked out every answer afterwards to make sure we were all on the same page.

And it was a brilliant chat. Certainly a far better one for having had the Checklist as a handy focus on the topics to discuss.

If you've never done this, I strongly recommend you do.

It certainly worked for us.

Oh, and while I'm here...

17 DAYS TO GO BEFORE WE'RE LIVE!