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Reply To: UK Games Expo 2019

June 4, 2019 at 12:16 am #1399781

Participant

9166xp

GMs who sign up to run games at expo (they are not “Staff”) are given very clear guidelines on consent, safety, and so forth.

I feel the ban is fully appropriate. A zero tolerance policy. It sends a clear message.

Compare that to myself and the rest of the Onyx Path Publishing team running Vampire, Geist, Changeling, Promethean and Werewolf in the same afternoon. We all start our sessions doing calibration. Setting expectations, understanding what limits are and how to “tap out” if things get a bit intense, and the enjoyment of the game relies on all players working together to ensure everyone is having fun. With that calibration done, we then have established quite happily that we can do horror, we can talk about dark topics, but with the knowledge we can say “hey this is getting a bit heavy, can we gloss over it/fade to black etc”.

You can do horror, you can imply horror, but given appropriate guidelines, consent, and confidence to hold your hand up and say “this has gone too far”.