Psychological Safety at the Gaming Table

It has definitely been a while since I’ve sat down to write. Fall Dungeons and Dragons Group Therapy sessions are in full swing and while it is very exciting, running four different campaigns can take up time and creative energy. But with the start of any campaign, it is always a good idea to talk about psychological safety at the gaming table.

Psychological safety isn’t just for therapy groups, it is for everyone. The joys and wonders of tabletop role-playing games are the open narration and the idea that you can go anywhere and do anything. However, this can turn into a double edged sword as anything can come up. And sometimes the things that come up are triggers that impact the mental health of one or more of the players at the table.

This phenomenon, the things happening to the character(s) having an impact on player(s) around the table, is known as “bleed out”. Dr. Sarah Bowman talks a lot about bleed out in her book The Functions of Role-Playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems, and Explore Identity.

In therapy, I am specifically looking for the bleed out moments. It is an excellent time to process what is going on in a therapeutic setting to hopefully help clients learn more about themselves and better understand their triggers. But a normal gaming table isn’t where you want to be processing through your triggers. Do not, I repeat DO NOT assume the role of a therapist for your friends during your game sessions.

The first time that I witnessed the phenomenon of bleed out was during a weekly game with friends. There was a moment that two characters were having a heated argument over the handling of a situation. A chaotic character crossed the moral rules of a lawful character and the lawful character was not happy. Another player at the table was highly stressed following the encounter. Now thankfully, that person was able to take that information back to their own therapist, process out what had happened, and work through it. But what happens if the trigger is so much that the person can’t sit through it or doesn’t have a therapist in place to process through what is going on? What happens when the narrative stops being fun and causes actual psychological damage? The goal of putting safety tools in place from the start is that you never have to answer those questions.

There are many ways to put safety tools in place at your table. You’re already taking an important step just by being here and reading this. How you implement safety into your games should be something that you discuss at Session 0 and it isn’t a bad idea to have refresher discussions from time to time to remind your players what they can do if things turn from fun to triggering. I try to point out the X Card that lives on my gaming table each session so that my players know where it is and also remember that it exists. I feel this is extra important with the kids I work with because many of them are new to the world of TTRPGs and need reminded of many of the tools and resources around the table in general, from what a D20 is to what they can do for their actions.

So what even is an X Card and what other options do you have to ensure safety for your players?

The X Card was an idea created by John Stavropoulos and is discussed in length at his website. The basic premise is that there is a card with an X on it at the table. At any point during a game, players or even the Game Master (GM) can edit out content of the game simply by touching or holding up the card. For example, maybe your group of adventurers has come across a wagon stopped along side the road and the roadside group is not too happy with an animal so they are inflicting animal cruelty (I am purposely being vague as I do not want to trigger myself or others with graphic descriptions of animal cruelty). The description is starting to make me as a player upset and I realize I don’t want this content in my game. So I touch the X card. The GM notices that I’m uncomfortable and have utilized the X card, so they change the narrative. Now instead of witnessing animal cruelty, our party sees that it was a big pile of furs and the man was taking out some rage over the cart wheel having broken off. I no longer have to have what was making me uncomfortable in the content of the game and my GM has edited the content without asking me questions to help relieve my discomfort.

Another great resource to know about when thinking of psychological safety at the gaming table is Monte Cooke’s Consent in Gaming. This is a free resource you can download to learn more about safety tools at the table. A tool that I use at my table is the RPG Consent Checklist which you can get as a form fillable PDF (again for free) from Monte Cooke Games. This tool is nice to give to your players before the campaign starts. The form fillable has a space to put your name, but I often have my groups fill them out anonymously. You have the ability to disclose ahead of time the theme of the game and the “movie rating” where you anticipate the content might fall. For example, I tell my teen and pre-teen groups that we try to stay at a PG-13 rating at the high end meaning that I limit the graphic content of gore and horror and we try to watch the language we are using at the table. This form allows for players to indicate things they are comfortable with, would like caution around, or simply do not want to see in their games.

The consent checklist is a way to explore your players “Lines and Veils”. Lines refer to a hard boundary that you should not cross. This would be things that you don’t want to come across in the game at all. Veils refer to any content that the players don’t want to have full view of on screen. What that could mean is that a player is fine with the knowledge that their character exists in an imperfect world where sexual assaults exist, and they may even have had some type of similar trauma from their backstory, but they as a player do not want direct contact with descriptions of sexual assault or “on screen” time spent on sexual assault content. Just as a veil can obscure the facial features of the person wearing it, a narrative veil obscures the full details from the storyline. Asking for a veil is asking that the GM and other players use caution around that topic as narrative could quickly go from “proceed with caution” to “stop, this isn’t fun anymore”. I got to play in a game that had a really creative way of using lines and veils in game. If during the session we started to come up on a veil and wanted everyone to know to proceed with caution without breaking the role playing there was a specific book that we could ask for or reference. Basically, that title told everyone to take it slow to ensure our storyline didn’t hit a line. If a line did come up, there was a narrative based mechanic of having our character go to their trailer to take a break (this was a game where we were playing characters shooting a television show). The physical act of removing our character from the current narration would basically cut the narration and give the group a chance to regroup without further discussion of the trigger topic. As best as I have been able to find, the concept of lines and veils was first brought up by Ron Edwards in his Sex and Sorcery supplement.

I also want to mention the Luxton Technique. It is a bit different from the other tools already discussed in that it actually hands over content control to the person in psychological distress. The player is able to talk, if they want, about what they are experiencing and the expectation is that the entire group listens. This enables the player to say what they need to have happen in the scene to feel better. It can alternatively allow the players to say that they need to take a break for a bit and pause the game. For example, I was playing in a game where a player at the table had strong Native American ties and had a deep personal respect for nature and animals. There was an encounter that happened where a sea monster had been created by stitching together various creatures and they were clearly in pain in this new twisted existence. The player at the moment was able to say that they needed to take a break from the game. They were also able to communicate why this encounter was triggering and express that they needed to see the person responsible stopped so that no other creatures would suffer in that way. The rest of the group was able to listen and then focus all efforts on finding the person responsible. My character happened to be obsessed with collecting trinkets, mostly of beautiful portrayals of animals carved into stone or wood. I was able to search the markets and my shelves and find a carving of each of the animals that had been involved and give the carvings to the player’s character in game to honor their loss and help my fellow player heal. If that player would not have had the Luxton Technique to communicate their needs, the rest of the group may have missed their distress entirely and gone on in a way that was not fun for the player. Ben Lehrman wrote an interesting piece on the Luxton Technique and his experience with PTSD which you can find here.

One of the biggest struggles I’ve seen around implementing safety tools around the table is concerns that it is taking something away from the game. And that is probably fair as most of what we’ve discussed is about editing narrative and sometimes removing content. But I would challenge anyone with that concern to ask themselves “is it worth including if it means you lose your players and/or your friends?” Traumatizing your friends as a GM or as a player in a campaign should never be your goal. And I’m not talking about a game where everyone has consented to a horror setting and you just happen to have an amazing narration of something happening that causes your friends to squirm in their seats. I’m talking about true psychological distress that impacts the player’s mental health and makes them not want to play anymore. We should always strive to build an inclusive gaming community. And if you are truly stuck on wanting to run a game with content that a player at the table is not comfortable with, take the time to process with that player that this may not be the game for them. Yes, the therapist is saying communication is a huge part of making sure that everyone is having an enjoyable time at the table.

If you have questions about how you can begin to implement safety tools at your table feel free to reach out to me. I’m always happy to have discussions about how you can ensure player safety. I also want to say that you can begin to implement these tools even if you are in the middle of a campaign that you haven’t previously established safety tools for. It is never too late to talk with your table about ensuring player safety.