[pavel_lishin]

In the western world, a potion of healing is more akin to taking antibiotics, and imbibing alcohol has been agreed to be just a Regular Thing People Do, not a drug thing.

And in any case, yeah! This is why you talk things out in a session zero! If a player at a table is an alcoholic, they might not want to play in a campaign where other PCs regularly binge-drink. It doesn't necessarily mean the other players aren't allowed to do this, it might just mean that this isn't the right table for the player, or it might mean that the DM has to scratch out "alcoholic" as a trait for an NPC and replace it with something else.

[nothercastle]

If you need to go through a HR exercise at the beginning of a game perhaps you need to find a different group of people to play with.

[MadcapJake]

Let's look at another media: movies. Do you ever look at reviews or the advisory notices to see if a movie will be appropriate for someone you're watching it with? This is the exact same thing but since the story hasn't been written yet, you need to agree with all the story tellers (DM and players) what your story rating will be.

Do you skip this step when it's your closest pals who can handle a gory mature story? sure!

Is it good to have a system for others to use or in public settings? Definitely.

[danudey]

Hypothetical situation: someone had an abusive alcoholic father, and discussion of drinking and alcohol brings up a lot of unwanted feelings, including anxiety, unpleasant memories resurfacing, etc.

You're suggesting that the person in that scenario should either suffer those feelings in silence or should just keep trying new groups until they find one that just coincidentally doesn't bring up those topics?

Or someone who was sexually assaulted should keep that to themselves, and if discussion of the topic comes up in the game and makes them uncomfortable they should just leave and go find a new group without telling anyone why?

Are you suggesting that you could just say "hey, these are things that bother me so I'd rather not be part of the game if these topics are going to come up", and either the DM can exclude those topics, or they can refuse and the player can go somewhere else? Because that's exactly what is being discussed.

Lay out your ground rules. If there's no way to reconcile, go elsewhere, but it saves people getting blindsided halfway through the game and then having to deal with it while surrounded by other people and potentially feeling very vulnerable.

[zug_zug]

So what if your dad died last month, and the DM decides it'll be a cool twist for his BBEG to abduct your character's dad gouge his eyes out and try to kill him?

It's good to be able to explain these things, and IMO a lot of D&D players aren't comfortable being the first one to say that stuff without an "HR" exercise to give them permission.

[ddingus]

Well, if my dad had died, I would understand the DM has no clue, until I say something.

If I say something and that scene plays out, things are understandably ugly.

If I don't and find myself uncomfortable, that is on me to manage, nobody else at the table.

How are these things so damn hard for people to understand?

All that was true when I played years ago. People would intro the game, have chat about stuff and then get into it. I recall having tough conversations, and I recall just being a good human to the other humans as a given.

I don't get the discussion today.

[pavel_lishin]

I'm not sure which side you're arguing for, but I do agree with what I think I'm reading - that you should be able to tell the table what you are and aren't comfortable with. And the new rules encourage that.

[ddingus]

You are reading it correctly. The before game meet n greet was where everyone caught up with everyone else.

Maybe being pre cell phone has something to do with it all.

Where and when I came from, the idea of having to do a "might trigger" rundown did not need to happen because of the dynamics I put into my prior comment.

How about this mess:

Say one chooses to not talk about a dead father confident the game will play out fine. Basically omit the father in the pre-game rundown of potential triggers.

Then the scene happens, and major trigger!

Now what?

Seems to me one falls back on the very basic rules above and acts accordingly.

Nobody else would be blamed. How could they?

The result is the talk didn't solve anything, which us my point and lack of understanding.

Another POV:

DM runs a scene that is a major trigger for someone. Bummer.

Pause game, help that person, right? Take a bit and figure it out? Do they want to end play? Is there something any of us can do? Etc...

Blame and shame aren't the answers. Being a good human is the answer.

Seems like someone is trying to write be a good human rules. Ah well. They tried I guess.

[rincebrain]

The point, I think, is that a lot of people pathologize "this is just a me problem" to the point that they don't want to bring things up at all, particularly if it's not someone they're very familiar with, because while some people react reasonably to, for example, "please do not include a graphic description of bugs crawling around, I had a really bad experience once and it still bothers me to think about", some people will also very deliberately introduce things for that reason.

Or perhaps you say "I don't like it if X" when you really meant "I am going to have a full blown trauma flashback if you surprise me with X", and they think that you meant what you said, and it's something they would do with all the maliciousness of hanging a "boo!" sign on your front door one day.

The goal is, I think, to recognize that a lot of people are bad at being the first one to bring things up, as well as a lot of people being bad at "reading the room", and set up an explicit normal structure to reduce the friction of doing so.

(Whether they succeeded or not is a different question, but I think that was the goal - to try and make it feel more normal and part of the structure and expectations, and thus have lower friction to bring things up a priori and in the moment, rather than people feeling like "I'm the problem" if there's no explicit moment for it and they have to ask.)

Yes, you can't make people be good people, but you can try to provide tools to make it feel more like the normal part of setting up and running your game to leave explicit room for them to say something. More or less the difference between saying "you can call us after filling out the paperwork and have us add manual edits to what you filled out" and "you can just include a form 412 and check the boxes for which things apply, and fill out an other box at the bottom if it's not covered".

[pavel_lishin]

Why do you frame it as an "HR exercise" when it's just the people who are about to play a game talking about what they expect out of it?

And how would I find a group of people whose playstyle is compatible with what I'm looking for without actually talking to them?

[danudey]

> Why do you frame it as an "HR exercise" when it's just the people who are about to play a game talking about what they expect out of it?

Because they're so incapable of considering other people's feelings that they think the only time anyone ever does so is because someone cried to HR about something and HR is making you sit through a meeting to cover the company's ass legally, and not because anyone actually cares about how they make other people feel.