Yeah, yeah, I get it. Everyone agrees with them, there’s a bunch of videos about them, all conventions do them. Except – we don’t really. We don’t need them for trusted players, do we? We don’t need them in our home groups, only for conventions. We don’t need them if we’re just playing D&D, only for horror games. Well – these are all wrong. Let me tell you why we need to talk about them.

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Recently, I went to one of my favourite conventions. It has, if you check the website, a rigorous approach to safety tools. GMs offer games with “tags” that explicitly call out “conflicting agendas,” “PvP,” or similar – they can offer other tags as well, but those are mandatory if they feature in the game. All games are expected to have lines & veils, open table, and an X card in play, unless a discussion has happened with the organising committee. The huge, huge majority of people attending are those I’d gladly share a table with. And yet, I had a poor experience as a player in a couple of games there.

I just did not realise how much I absolutely despise mind control in games. I had no idea, probably because I’ve never encountered it before. But in two of the three games I played in, this featured. In one, a player rolled a social skill check to tell the rest of the group to leave another PC behind. In another, a player’s PC was mind controlled to attack the rest of the group – and successfully killed most of them – in the finale.

Neither game had an X card on the table, nor was one introduced, nor were lines & veils covered by the GM at the start. They were in a column on a spreadsheet, but they weren’t mentioned during the game. In the first game, I questioned it when it happened, and was dismissed (I did give proper feedback after the game, and in fairness I don’t think the GM realised how upset I was about it) – in the second game, I didn’t even bother. Both left quite a bad taste in the mouth.

But, but – I hear you say – you complain there weren’t safety tools, and yet you didn’t raise them yourself! Why didn’t you speak up? Well, while I’ll sometimes do this at the start of sessions at conventions – and I’m much more inclined to do so now – let me tell you, it is incredibly difficult to speak up if you are actually upset in a game. You project your state of mind on the game, and anticipate that the GM and other players will be similarly upset. It’s harder, in fact, if these are people you know well. There is a huge amount of social pressure to just put up. When I did raise it, and it was dismissed, that just reinforced this. And believe me, those of you that have met me, I am not normally someone who finds it hard to speak up in TTRPG circles.

That “tag” system? Neither game was tagged PvP. In fact the first game was tagged “No PvP” – and two of the PCs had secret missions the rest of us weren’t meant to know about!

What a shambles, you’re thinking. But – wait – I don’t really blame anyone for this, really. Two GMs had the best of intentions and made decisions that made the game exciting and interesting for other players. It just wasn’t for me. Should they have introduced safety tools? Well yes, but lots of con GMs don’t. Should the organisers have made a bigger deal of safety tools, and mentioned them in the “welcome speech?” Well, yes, but lots of con organisers don’t. Lots of conventions, and convention games, pay lip service to safety tools without really committing to them. And so I can’t really blame anyone for my experiences. I’ll go to that con again, I’ll play with those GMs again… but, we can do better.

We don’t need to pay lip service to safety tools. We can (and should) introduce them at the start of each session. We can refuse to undermine them with “well I know everyone at the table,” or “I’m running D&D, nothing upsetting will come up,” and use them anyway. We can use an X card if we’re not sure about it until we find something better, rather than dismissing it for spurious edge cases. We can insist on safety tools when we organise gaming events, and be unapologetic about our expectations about them. We can, in fact, insist on safety tools if we join a table as a player – and I will in future. It will make it better for everyone.

Because at the moment, lots of us are just half-assing them, and that’s not good enough. We need to actually talk about them.