X-Cards Revisited
“Censorship is telling a man he can’t eat steak, because a baby can’t chew it.”
– Mark Twain
The X-Card is a tool that is supposed to make roleplaying more ‘safe’. I’m not quite sure how sitting around a table rolling dice and talking is supposed to be ‘unsafe’ unless you tread on a D4. Leaving the base absurdity of the whole idea aside, I want to articulate my problems with them, long form, as it seems that the point is hard to get across on social media.
As with so many things these days, opposition to a concept that people have decided is progressive and inclusive is taken as automagically people hateful, nasty, uncaring or whatever else is the opposite of what people assume the thing they’re trying to impose is. As is also the case with many of these things, my opposition stems from the exact same values they claim they are trying to uphold.
The idea of the X-card is that if the game strays into uncomfortable territory for one of the players, they can play down the X-card and that scene or thread is stopped and the game skips on ahead. This is meant to protect vulnerable players from PTSD, offence, the triggering (used unironically for once) of phobia and so on.
Opposition to this idea is characterised as bullying, mean-spiritedness and so forth.
Alright, let’s engage in a thought experiment to try and demonstrate why this is a bad idea.
Imagine you’re riding a roller coaster, but everyone has access to a button that will immediately stop the roller coaster and bring it gently back to the start. A panic button, if you will. The coaster slowly climbs that first rise and is about to drop when… someone pushes the button. Ruining the experience for everyone on the roller coaster who was up for the ride from the get-go.
That doesn’t work for you? How about this then?
You buy a ticket for a horror movie and enter the theatre. Taking your seat you discover that every seat has been fitted with a button that will skip to the next scene if you find it harrowing. The film starts, the slasher appears behind the first teenage camper, raises his machete and… the film skips over the murder to the next scene, a pair of teenagers sharing a dooby behind the boat sheds. One, squeamish person has ruined the experience of the film for everyone else.
No analogy is perfect, but by transferring the X-card idea to other entertainment experiences, hopefully the absurdity and selfishness of the concept is made more obvious.
The X-card doesn’t prevent bullying, it empowers it. It gives one person at the table the power – albeit only by social convention – to interrupt and spoil the fun of everyone else at the table, and to greatly inconvenience the Games Master.
There are other issues with it too.
Firstly, it’s hard to see where an X-card would ever be used. If you have a regular group then you already know each other’s social, emotional and other boundaries and have negotiated them – probably – for years. In that context an X-card has no role whatsoever.
In convention or store games the use of such a card will be purely disruptive and, by and large, you should know what you’re signing up for when you sign up for a game. If you have arachnophobia then you probably shouldn’t have signed up for a game entitled: The Spawning Caves of the feral miscegenated Neo-Arachnid Variants.
Secondly, gaming is a safe environment, automatically. There’s nothing there that can actually hurt you. It’s all words and numbers, descriptions and choice. While gaming isn’t therapy, it can provide a cathartic environment to live out a variety of fantasies and to face up to and overcome things you find difficult. The avoidance of difficult subjects can entrench and strengthen your issues with them and therapists who do deal with this kind of thing tend to recommend facing it and gradual acclimatisation. If you let a player avoid anything that upsets them or sets off their issues, you’re not doing them any favours – quite the opposite.
Thirdly, the idea of X-cards is part of a general trend to try and homogenise and beat down gaming into some sort of family-friendly, pablumesque milieu where anything irreverent, dangerous, challenging, sexual or violent – anything that could even potentially upset or offend someone is done away with.
X-cards may be limited to certain groups and you might be able to choose to play or not play in a group that does or does not use them, but it’s part of a greater context and continuum of censorship, control and well-meaning interference that now extends all the way from publishing to the table itself.
The responsible thing to do, if you’re someone who has a hard time with certain plots, actions, monsters or whatever else at the table, is to remove yourself from the game at these points – or completely – rather than to selfishly screw it up for everyone else.
The only X-rated cards at the table should be Cthentacle.
I've always found of the X-Card to be a tacit admission that those people most invested in calling for one don't see the other people at the table as people worth talking to, nor do they see them as people who have responsibilities for themselves.
I run an explicitly unsafe space. I like to make that free and clear to everyone at the table when they sit down. Things you don't like will probably happen. Things that disturb you will probably happen. That you feel disturbed is no reason to stop the game. That you feel "triggered" is no reason to stop the game. That being on the table, you are going to be sitting with some people among which can be an asshole.
If everyone's playing and having a good time and then out comes, "the eight hairy legs of the hideous giant spider creep over the edge of the long forgotten well, it's sparkling, beady eyes full of ravening hunger and its hideous pedipalps clash noisily, breaking the silence," and just last week you'd fallen into a nest of brown recluses and really would rather not be reminded – then it's incumbent on you to say "dudes, I am really not down for the spiders today. Last week's nest full filled my quota. I'm just going to step out until the end of the scene, have a bite of pizza, and someone come get me when the stomping is done." And then get up and do that.
Now, if you explicitly told people that you were about to run an old-school dungeon crawl and they didn't expect spiders to pop up along the way – that's on them. They should know better. It's incumbent on them to look after their own interests.
The real problem with the X-Card as a construct is threefold.
Firstly, it puts the burden for dealing with the situation on everyone but the person whom that situation falls on. Everyone else suffers. Everyone else is expected to suffer. Everyone else is expected to suffer cheerfully. The responsibility falls on everyone else at the table.
Secondly, it explicitly maintains that explanation is not really necessary. It creates a blind behind which any motivation suffices. That's a terrible situation to put forth.
Thirdly, it infantilizes everyone at the table. It makes the assumption that they are not strong enough adults, not self caring enough, and utterly not socially adept sufficiently to be exposed to a thing, make a face, and say "dude, what the fuck?"
The assumption that negotiation is not possible and thus needs a tool like the crowbar to open up the gaps for it is the part that I find most personally insulting as a gamer. It makes me wonder about how these people have been communicating about their games – effectively forever.
But since most of these individuals seem to have an issue with personal responsibility and personal accountability in the first place, pushing an individual's problems out on all those around them and leaving them with no responsibility, I suppose I shouldn't see much of anything that gives me surprise.
In my other answers to @grimjim's post I already shared my opinions to most of your points, which in the end aren't that different (X-Card abusers, conventions, not trying to be the guy making someone cry at your table, …)
However
Summarizes the whole X-Card-debate pretty well:
The X-Card should not replace proper communication, but the X-Card is (or should be) a shorthand for everyone to say (especially to the currently talking person)
"I do not want the thing that is happening right now. Are you all alright with changing/skipping the narrative, or should I explain myself for a second?"
It should then be everyone else evaluating "Am I alright with nodding this off, or does this spoil my fun, in which case I should talk about this."
Often however some people say "If someone raises the X-Card the current thing HAS to be skipped, no questions asked!" which doesn't talk about the problem, not solving it. The whole RPG is a conversation, people should talk about it.
If someone isn't happy you should talk about it.
Don't forget to talk about stuff. Talk about why you used the X-Card. Talk about how you intend to carry the game on. Talk about the other players opinions.
Talking about things is often forgotten when talking about the X-Card.
The problem from where I sit is that "the X Card should not replace proper communication" is what a lot of people *say,( but when you look at what they actually do – it's not a shorthand, it's the only hand.
Why do you need shorthand for a two second act? Seriously. A reasonable adult should be able to hold up their hand, point at the GM, and say "hold up, I'm uncomfortable with this," or point at someone else at the table and say the same thing. Then they can have a discussion.
Unfortunately, this gets coupled with "anyone that's uncomfortable should never have to explain themselves," which is a toxic combination. That idea is toxic to communication in general, anyway, but in combination with a clearly defined trump card (irony utterly intended) it actively impedes the conversation at the table.
I much prefer to disengage the whole thing up front. If I wanted to run a game for kindergartners, I know where the local schools are. Of course, the local kindergartners generally have a better grasp on how to play together that a lot of adults, especially in the RPG industry.
The shortcut shortcuts conversation. It actively impedes communication. Especially in combination with a lot of the other rhetoric which comes out of the mouths of the people who espouse the X Card, it's actively pernicious and damaging.
Screw that. I don't need that kind of static.
Things like this urk me for a lot of the same reasons you had brought up. DMing is telling a story and while so much of table top is improv there are still moments that if you took them away from a campaign would cause the whole thing to fall apart. Players are meant to try to outsmart the DM in a way, use your gear and abilities to do things they didn't expect from you and you're having a great time. Wrenches get thrown into the cogs every second but giving anyone carte blanche to throw that big a wrench into the works is not a good idea.
If a single person is uncomfortable or unwilling to go along with something there is the option to just speak up or walk away whether in character or in the real world. If it's a group of friends I'd hope you'd found people who mesh well enough with you to accommodate you, and if it's at a game shop or con with people you'd never met then most people don't want to have "I made someone cry." as part of their reputation.
Even a situation that is uncomfortable or unpleasant doesn't mean it's harmful to you. Recently my grandmother died and my job gave me a few days off to help get things in order and grieve. I do much better when I have something to do in any situation but I needed something even more then. Recently a friend had paid me back with a game called Va-11 Hall-A. It wasn't my usual type of game but I was interested in the setting enough and started playing it. The entire time I played I felt too like the main character. At a point I would pay more attention to who spoke next and try to guess what she would say, occasionally getting something dead on aside from the wording.
Roughly halfway through the story it's revealed that a character from the protagonist's past has died and a relative has come blaming the character. Lliterally the day after my grandmother's death I'm faced with a story where a person's death is a crucial plot point. I had an x-card, I could've turned the game off and never looked back. But I didn't. It kept going and I kept seeing more of what I was feeling coming through in the story. It was a therapeutic look at myself and the way I was dealing with my emotions.
It wouldn't be an understatement to say that the game had changed me a bit. Running and hiding from it when it comes up in a controlled way would have been me robbing myself of personal growth. I doubt that many people can craft situations that would be so useful but it's not something you can tell from the moment you see things starting to veer in a direction. If a game isn't the place to look at and deal with what mentally disturbs you then where is?
This sort of is the "X-Card before the X-Card was a thing" … next to "Talk about it".
You always have the option to leave, but if you're having fun every other way, and the thing you're uncomfortable with doesn't seem to be a major thing, skipping it, to continue having fun, and seeing the other (non-uncomfortable) story end would be better than leaving, wouldn't it?
In RPGs there is more stuff going on, and the players (which the GM is one of) are writing a story together. Saying "Please don't make emotional deaths a thing" or raising the X-Card in case of an emotional death on the horizon (which should be the same thing) is better than making someone cry at a convention.
Even if it were for me to "tough it out" to advance as a person, uncertain of whether I could take it, or have to break down, crying after ten minutes, I don't want to do that with strangers at a convention, but at my home, ideally with friends.
I'm really unsure as to what exactly you're trying to say other than don't go into certain places in your stories. Certainly when you're doing a one-off with a group of strangers you don't go to places where things like character deaths, genocides, economic strife, ect would be used but that's more because of a time constraint. You have maybe 6 hours max with these people and lots of that is going to be slowed down by things like combat and side distractions. Those things being used as story points can't function in such a small amount of time and the story told suffers because it can't have its payoff.
I don't understand why anyone would be against something like an emotional death in a story long enough for it to be effective. It's the only way to be respectful to death in a story. If there is a death and it's someone of importance would you rather their death be unemotional? Would you rather they never die? If you've asked for there to be no deaths then you know there will be no deaths. If you know no one will ever die then anytime they're in a life threatening situation you don't have to worry and all the tension is gone. Balancing the possibility of death is a big part of why designing combat encounters is so difficult.
I think the X card is a bad idea because it's like codifying "don't be a dick" into the law. If you want to have fun and play the game you'll be accommodating. It's an insult to any decent DM or player to suggest that someone needs to have one. It pulls me out of my character to think that maybe someone could just say they don't want something and poof things are different. Everyone is making a story together, sure, but no one can be entirely in control. Not even the DM should have the power to just zap something out of existence. They have to own mistakes and bad die rolls just like the players do.
If there is a situation that is disturbing, uncomfortable, or unfun for a player then there is probably some point to it. Maybe there's a villain being set up, every good story needs an antagonist. Maybe it's a consequence of the players' actions, over throwing a leader causes lots of problems. Maybe it doesn't even involve the players but is to set motivations for an NPC, vengeance (something that would require a death to be emotional to atleast on person) is a way to give a goal. Stories that are free to explore things that aren't the normal standard subjects are the stories that are the most interesting and impactful ones. That freedom is what sets table-top apart from every other form of gaming. Allowing someone to stop that from happening is asking for worse campaigns.
If you want to use it and everyone else you're playing with has agreed to use it then go right ahead. To try and make it a rule is where the problem lies. Let anyone make any story they want because trying to stop it is impossible. If you'd rather not participate in something specific then just don't participate. Don't stop everyone else who is alright with it from going down that path.
Where is the picture from?