Re: REKT: Beyond The Edge (Main Thread)
Posted: Tue Aug 20, 2019 3:36 pm
I hate triple-posting, but it's important that I put this in a new post. This is something I should've done ages ago, but I didn't understand the importance of it until the past few months.
As an experienced storyteller, I love to explore dark places - uncomfortable topics that can have profound effects on both characters and the story alike. These are things like murder, torture, body horror, creepiness, spiders, rape, starvation, spousal violence, etc. However, I also realize that this may not be the case for everyone "at the table", and as I'm trying to make the game fun for everyone, it's important that it actually is fun for everyone. To that end, I'm going to use a common, tried-and-true system called "Lines and Veils". Likely, some of you have already heard of it. The basic idea is that you designate certain topics as being off-limits, and the story will never go there.
- LINES are topics that make players uncomfortable enough that they would not want to keep playing if they ever came up. As a result, these topics would never come up; they are LINES that will never be crossed. As an example, if we decided "spiders" was a Line, that would mean there would never be ANY spiders in the story. Nobody would be allowed to talk about them. It would be as if they didn't exist.
- VEILS are topics that can be touched on, but everything will "fade to black" and nobody will have to read or roleplay the scene. We hide these things behind a VEIL. As an example, if things are getting hot and steamy between a player character and an NPC, and we have a veil defined as "descriptive sexual encounters", then the scene will "fade to black" and we wouldn't describe it. It still happens, but it happens "offscreen". If mentioned at all, it is mentioned off-handedly and we don't really go into much detail. For instance, "the people that captured her used her for gratification, but she eventually managed to escape".
What I need you guys to do is come up with your own lists of Lines and Veils. I don't think there should be that many, overall - we've meandered around a lot of touchy subjects so far in REKT without any real objections - but it's worth asking anyway. Here's a step-by-step of what's going to happen:
1. Players will PM me their list of their own personal Lines and Veils - specifically PM because nobody else needs to know what anybody else's are. You shouldn't have to worry about people judging you for, for instance, not wanting spider-monsters in the campaign.
(Be very highly specific! For instance: If you're okay with discussion of sexual violence, or sexual violence being part of a character's backstory, but would feel very uncomfortable with any graphical depictions of it, you should specifically say "graphical depictions of sexual violence". If you say "I don't want descriptions of gore", tell me exactly how far.)
2. After a week or so, I will take these Lines and Veils, condense them, and present them here without mentioning names.
3. We will respect these topics in the future. People can change their minds at any time.
If you don't have any lines or veils to suggest, that's okay too. You don't have to PM me at all in that case. This is just in case anyone has any objections.
Finally, and this is important: don't feel ashamed of having to mention something. REKT is supposed to be fun. If a topic exists that would make you want to stop playing, it's important you mention it. Keep in mind that by now you know my style of storytelling quite well, and how far I go into descriptions of things. I'm not likely to add more detail in those areas anyway.
Also, to be perfectly clear: I do not have any topics planned that require us to do this.
This is more of a "just in case" thing that I really should've done prior to the campaign even beginning - and would have, had I known how important it was.
As an experienced storyteller, I love to explore dark places - uncomfortable topics that can have profound effects on both characters and the story alike. These are things like murder, torture, body horror, creepiness, spiders, rape, starvation, spousal violence, etc. However, I also realize that this may not be the case for everyone "at the table", and as I'm trying to make the game fun for everyone, it's important that it actually is fun for everyone. To that end, I'm going to use a common, tried-and-true system called "Lines and Veils". Likely, some of you have already heard of it. The basic idea is that you designate certain topics as being off-limits, and the story will never go there.
- LINES are topics that make players uncomfortable enough that they would not want to keep playing if they ever came up. As a result, these topics would never come up; they are LINES that will never be crossed. As an example, if we decided "spiders" was a Line, that would mean there would never be ANY spiders in the story. Nobody would be allowed to talk about them. It would be as if they didn't exist.
- VEILS are topics that can be touched on, but everything will "fade to black" and nobody will have to read or roleplay the scene. We hide these things behind a VEIL. As an example, if things are getting hot and steamy between a player character and an NPC, and we have a veil defined as "descriptive sexual encounters", then the scene will "fade to black" and we wouldn't describe it. It still happens, but it happens "offscreen". If mentioned at all, it is mentioned off-handedly and we don't really go into much detail. For instance, "the people that captured her used her for gratification, but she eventually managed to escape".
What I need you guys to do is come up with your own lists of Lines and Veils. I don't think there should be that many, overall - we've meandered around a lot of touchy subjects so far in REKT without any real objections - but it's worth asking anyway. Here's a step-by-step of what's going to happen:
1. Players will PM me their list of their own personal Lines and Veils - specifically PM because nobody else needs to know what anybody else's are. You shouldn't have to worry about people judging you for, for instance, not wanting spider-monsters in the campaign.
(Be very highly specific! For instance: If you're okay with discussion of sexual violence, or sexual violence being part of a character's backstory, but would feel very uncomfortable with any graphical depictions of it, you should specifically say "graphical depictions of sexual violence". If you say "I don't want descriptions of gore", tell me exactly how far.)
2. After a week or so, I will take these Lines and Veils, condense them, and present them here without mentioning names.
3. We will respect these topics in the future. People can change their minds at any time.
If you don't have any lines or veils to suggest, that's okay too. You don't have to PM me at all in that case. This is just in case anyone has any objections.
Finally, and this is important: don't feel ashamed of having to mention something. REKT is supposed to be fun. If a topic exists that would make you want to stop playing, it's important you mention it. Keep in mind that by now you know my style of storytelling quite well, and how far I go into descriptions of things. I'm not likely to add more detail in those areas anyway.
Also, to be perfectly clear: I do not have any topics planned that require us to do this.
This is more of a "just in case" thing that I really should've done prior to the campaign even beginning - and would have, had I known how important it was.
People shouldn't have to justify the fact that they don't enjoy something, either.
