Dungeons & Dragons Consent Form Makes The Rounds Again 

Exactly right, mature adult behavior trumps colored boxes on a PDF every time.

@@drivinganddragons1818 The only people I have seen actually use this, use it like notes to refer to when having the "heres what kinda game were playin" discussion

A very astute and reasonable stance. Just like a movie, the audience doesn't get to dictate the script. But at bare minimum if you say the movie is PG-13 kid friendly, I should expect it to be free of sex and adult themes and if you say "it's R rated for nudity and drug use" I shouldn't complain when my kid sees a guy doing rails off a stripper. I would use a version of this form if a group paid me to write a campaign/adventure for them, but if I've already got one written up? The game is the game, don't like the content? Play something else.

That's a fair assessment. Seeing that form is generally a red flag.

Honestly, like all safety tools, they're unnecessary if your table features mature adults acting like mature adults and not professionally offended children. Most issues are prevented by common decency, open communication, and realistic expectations. That said, there are SOME situations where things like this form can make things go more smoothly. I think the biggest issue is the direction of the workflow. I see no merit in a player filling out a form to tell me what they're ok with, it is much more efficient to hand them a form informing them of what will and won't be allowed at the table that I run. Vampire with no blood or gore...that's just stupid. I'll bet that player was the kind of guy who wonders why his vegan cat suffers so much. I almost guarantee the forms cause more issues than they prevent. The kind of players who think these forms are a good idea are the kind of people who are constantly searching for things to be offended by, it is best not to give them additional prompts.

Great idea, I'm sure those get done wrong pretty often. I know I'm really bad about accidentally telling players something they missed

It really is why gatekeeping isn't only a good idea, but very necessary. Keeping these ideas away from the mainstream of the hobby is imperative, it's already killing D&D. This form could be something completely unobjectionable with a few changes and when people attack you for mentioning those changes, they just prove that it really is about coercion and control under the sheepskin of compassion.

The consent form and safety discussions are excellent at weeding out people who hate basic consideration of others.

@@ericvicaria8648 BS. No one puts a consent form on the table unless their fundamental goal is to make other people uncomfortable. It's there to give negative consent. The player checks off what they don't want, and that gives negative consent to do everything else on the list. It's no coincidence that it comes out of BDSM and porn. I have daughters that RP and they've never had problems but they've been told to as soon as they see a consent form on the table to get up and leave because the GM is probably a sociopath. If I see one at a convention, I'm walking away. There are so much on those forms which wouldn't be dealt with explicitly at a normal table anyway.

"people like me"... In other words, people you don't know at all but who don't agree with you? There's nothing said here to suggest a lack of consideration, only a leerly eye on an easily exploitable and disruptive tool that undermines the responsibility and authority of the GM.

@@drivinganddragons1818 This entire video is about a lack of consideration on your part.

@@ericvicaria8648 no, it really isn't. It's largely about how this is unnecessary to be considerate and that it's potential for disruption is far worse than it's potential for help... Just look at the behavior of its champions in this comment section.

That's not a checklist thing, that's a "GM setting appropriate expectations" thing. There's a basic level of societal decency we all are well aware of. The biggest issue with the checklist is that it puts the aspects of the game that are the realm of the GM under not just one, but all the players control. This is perfectly acceptable when the GM is a service provider hired to do a job, it's not when the GM is also a player there to enjoy the game.

@drivinganddragons1818 If you're playing with people you know, you probably don't need to worry about it at all. But with strangers, relying on that 'basic level of decency' is expecting too much. It doesn't have to be a checklist but having a conversation about it can be awkward and uncomfortable for some, and some things you may not think to bring up. The checklist in no way takes power from the GM. It simply tells you what the person is fine with. If there's a disagreement it underlines what you should discuss. If they draw a hard line and it would derail your plans to avoid crossing it, then they don't have to play in your game. I would personally have them fill it out as a part of the initial vetting process to make sure the players were compatible with my campaign. And again, completely optional. It's a useful tool but not one everyone needs.

@@Puzzles-Pins sounds exactly like what I said about using it kind of like a job application. I think one important thing to note is that unlike many old school GMs, I didn't just shit all over it as having no use whatsoever and spend several minutes outlining how it could be useful, though honestly I think a simple conversation covers 99% of those bases.

>> It's a little excessive but it's useful. A cast is useful too, but if your arm isn't broken the cast will just make you weaker for nothing.

I'm more or less in the same boat. Even in the CYA or public game situations I would change it from "consent form" to "player application" and just have a "special concerns" section. The one place I see it truly being useful as a consent form is one mentioned over on Facebook where it's a permission slip from parents to fill out before you run a game for their minor children.

Feel free to not let the door hit you on the way out, I don't want an ass print on my door. It's in no way a strawman, as people like uou literally do try to strong arm others into using your safety tools. You then try to more or less lie about what they are and how they work by simply plugging your ears and closing your eyes to any potential draw backs or abuse. Just like you chose to completely ignore half the video where I discussed the usefulness of the form, albeit with adjustments.

@@drivinganddragons1818 wow you are absolutely toxic. Yes, I did not bother watching he last half of your video because you made it abundantly clear how you think these tools should "die" and "be killed". Literally no one is forcing you to use this tool. Just ignore it and move on if you don't find it useful.

@@omfgtora lmao boy aren't you just a prime example of the kind of person who exemplifies why these things need to go away for the health of the hobby as a whole. "I didn't bother watching the whole thing but I sure think I know enough to comment on it"...boy were you wrong. I do ignore this tool at my table paco, just like I suggest most others do as well. But I have a YT to add commentary, which means commenting on things I don't like as well as ones I do. But then you just used the word "toxic" to describe a person who disagrees with you and doesn't care if "tell YT to never recommend your videos" so that kinda shows that you are the kind of abusive player that is the exact reason safety tools need to die out. Oops, I'm sorry. I said an ouchy word. They need to be excised from common parlance. By all means, keep replying. It's good for the algorithm.

Swing... And a miss. First, I pretty clearly outlined ways it can be used as well as how it can disrupt games. In particular the yellow areas where players can arbitrarily decide what is or isn't "too much" harming the experience for everyone else in service to themselves. I submit that if you have a group that needs this form it's ineffective and if you have a group with common sense and common decent, it is unnecessary.

>> I submit that if a consent form derails or is detrimental to your game it might be you who is the non-mature adult at the table. If you need a form to circumscribe every interaction you have with another human being-especially in the context of a work of fiction with decades of literature that rely on centuries of shared culture and mythology-you are very literally non-mature.

Maybe you need to learn some new tricks before demanding other people to bend to your will.

One would think if it were that kind of thirst I would be with sex and relationships, not the "no sunburns and poison ivy" section

Depends on who does the organizing. I rule zero'd the hell out of people in my Living Greyhawk game.

@@drivinganddragons1818 Alignment is objective and accepted canon in organized dnd events. There are no allowed deviations from the provided narrative. The mechanics coordinator can also be creative in npc interaction with vocal inflection and such however. All who participate in such an event are on equitable terms ideally, with good aligned characters exclusively this is a distinct possibility presuming the player/coordinators nos are respectful and cordial with One another and they are consistent with the good alignment for their character role play.

We all know what "those kind of people " really means.

That's not quite correct, weeding out overly sensitive, professionally offended players and/or intentionally disruptive and/or transgressive players is a perk, but it doesn't outweigh the negatives associated with this checklist in its presented form.

do we now? I'm willing to bet you don't, which is sad because despite what you've been trained to believe, it isn't a dog whistle, I literally mentioned the type of people it is yet I'll bet you think it is something else.

@drivinganddragons1818 It's the double standard of "those people are unhappy with certain options" when it turns out that you are also just as unhappy with certain options. It's funny to me.

@@Grimtheorist you're making an assumption that I'm unhappy in the first place. I have no emotional investment at all in consent forms. I offer commentary about how it's a bad thing overall and detrimental to a hobby I enjoy, but at the end of the day the whole hobby could fade into obscurity and it wouldn't effect my life.

Indeed. The same goes when "disagreement" or "disapproval" is redefined as "aggression" or "violence"

You've obviously never worked in mental health lol

No, but I don't need a career in mental health to smell BS when things like "words are violence" are wafting through the air.

@drivinganddragons1818 There's still a difference. For some people it is a matter of safety. Particularly those with trauma/ptsd

@@Puzzles-Pins despite the rampant over diagnosis of recent years, these cases are still few enough and far enough between that the responsibility for disclosure should lie on them. Of course, this also must be coupled with the GM being a rational human being who gives at least a general warning of content that is outside the bounds of common acceptance. You have severe arachnophobia? You need to tell the GM up front. You are a rape survivor who is very sensitive? You should know well ahead of time because any reasonable GM should know ahead of time that sexual assault is outside the bounds of reasonable expectations in most games.

If that were how it was used and how it's actual application played out, sure. But then again, no one here is mad about it. It's very possible to see something as useless if not a detriment and to be opposed to its use without being angry.

@@drivinganddragons1818 it’s only people opposed to safety tools that seem to think it somehow holds GMs hostage forcing them to run games they don’t want to. It goes both ways where it gives everyone including the gm a chance to signal what they don’t want. If anything there is a dealbreaker then you have discovered it before it happens at the table.

@@ryanb5127 therein lies the rub: if you're playing with people who are using it for that, it's unneeded as you have adult conversations before hand. The people who insist it's needed are those who will inevitably use it as a weapon. While there's an admitted "bad news bias" at play, I've never heard take of these things going well. I'll also say that virtually every situation I've heard about that this would "prevent" would have happened anyway because of the personalities involved.

@@drivinganddragons1818 then let me be the first to tell you it’s worked great for my groups, sometimes you don’t think of every line you might have preemptively. A list can make people consider things they might not have otherwise thought of and prevent misaligned expectations/assumptions. To give a specific example I had a game where canabilism came up. I was fine with that but didn’t want detailed descriptions of how the bodies were being “prepared”. Didn’t make a big change to the game but it was something that let me have more fun with the game. Yes I’m an adult and I would have been fine you though that even though it made me uncomfortable. But it wasn’t vital to include and I had a better time with it trimmed. I play DnD to have a good time with friends not to “get through stuff”

It trains players to look for offense. I honestly don't know how a person can live a happy life when they spend it constantly looking to be transgressed. Make no mistake, safety tools, removal of racial characteristics, consent forms, none of it offends me nor do I care one way or another if other people play that way. I do, however, see problems with them and I see them as things that actually damage the quality of the game itself, so I comment on it. Where I do take issue is when people try to force others to use it or when they actuvely attack the character of others based solely on their opinions of those things.

@@Matt-uc4iv yes, it's called "commentary" this is a commentary channel. It's very easy to point out and disagree with something while not being offended. That's hard to understand for you, I get it.

I care deeply about the safety of players. I cancel games if there's dangerous weather, I carry a gun in case evil people try to do evil things, I make sure people who drink too much have a ride home, I ask people if they have allergies before I serve the gumbo. But there's no safety risk from a description of a fictional world.

And the point is I do commentary videos. Sometimes what I comment on you care about, sometimes not. Some people say "why do we need a 25 min video on alignment".

If your both going extremely mature and its part of a 'job' like critical roll, dungeons and daddies, etc would something like a consent form be necessary

@@drivinganddragons1818 There can be. Hypothetical; Imagine my neighbor is a Dessert Storm veteran suffering from Complex PTSD. I choose to, despite knowing this, ignite fireworks outside his home. He wakes up in extreme mental distress, believing that it’s gunfire, having to relive the awful things that happened. The next morning he chooses to take his own life because of the distress. Would I have not been responsible for causing a mental safety hazard? Or should he just “get over it”? Similarly, when you force your players to experience certain events in game, it could be causing them distress for any number of reasons. Its hard to believe you actually care about people when YOU choose what to care about. Caring for others is taking into account what they need, not just what you are comfortable doing.

@@hawkeye399 not even close to the same thing. Your hypothetical is so full of holes I can wash vegetables in it. A: you have a known factor and are intentionally triggering it. B: did you go to all your neighbors when you moved in with a Celebrations Consent Checklist? No you didn't. C: you chose to do it even though you knew it was a problem, a form wouldn't stop you either. D: he can't simply go to a different house and not be subjected to your fireworks. Unlike a game table, he is actually being forced. E: guess what? Vets with PTSD have to "get over it" all over the country because fireworks and loud bangs are a reality they have little ability to completely avoid. They damned sure don't show up at the football stadium on July 4th and start yelling that they didn't consent to fireworks.

I like to give them, most of them at least, the benefit of the doubt. It's become a sacred cow to alot of the newer players and just like some OSR guys will have a come apart if you so much as mention a game with any sort of narrative structure not cobbled together from a random encounter table, they immediately assume if you don't like their forms and tools it's because you don't care and just want to be intentionally offensive. That said, I do find it amusing that the same people crying that lines and veils and X cards and consent forms are all about safety are the same ones who will build a campaign about the flying spaghetti monster assaulting the Virgin Mary the second they hear one of their players is a conservative Catholic or will make every NPC a drag queen the second a Baptist joins the party.

@@drivinganddragons1818 The funny thing is, a lot of stuff considered "triggers" and often show up on that checklist, I never ask about because I don't truck with it. Like SA (I hate having to shorten the words, but at least you know what I mean. But you know RU-vid.) SA happens, but off camera because evil people do evil things. I don't have to and won't describe it, and if a player brings it up, I put the kibosh on it. Racism is kept solely to fantasy racism and never real life racism. These just aren't things I want to bring up. Also, s*x things happen behind the black. I don't want to describe that to other men, and it's mostly men playing. Mostly my style is based off cheesy B Movies. Hell, I grew up on Harryhausen and Batman 66. Friends and players call it either a monster truck rally or pro wrestling event. Hope is a main theme in my games where if I go dark, it's grimbright because I don't like depressive and oppressive grimness, there is always a chance of a better day even if it's hard or miles of body horror. It almost feels like people wanting these forms can't bring themselves to believe that before they came up with that nonsense, people were playing emotionally healthy games. That they need to force some contract or else everything becomes the Crimson Flow of Bluddy Bludd tower. (I think I could make a funny module with that name.) They are the social arbiters of decency and anyone before that was vicious monsters.

Generally yes. That an CYA for event organizers and shop owners.

And yet you took the time to comment and help it algorithmicly. There are quite a few here who disagree with you, but then you can only lead a horse to water...

@@Matt-uc4iv funny, this video resulted in around a 40% sub increase. Did you just come here to show your ass or do you have something meaningful to add?

First, thank you for the respectful comment. Second, the easy part: I think you mean an Atropal, not Atropius. Atropius is a giant evil planet thing. Killing an Atropal is not an abortion. This is because while it looks like and may even be formed from a godly fetus, it is not. If anything it's existence is one of the only things more wretched than an abortion, that being the abomination of creating an undead from someone who died before ever being born. It's no more an abortion than killing a zombie is murder. I'd also point out it's like CR 30. If your party is fighting one they've been together long enough to know their boundaries. Lastly, let's just say this is an epic level 1 shot, any DM include such a creature should be mentioning it's overall theme in the game description up front as it is not within the bounds of common decency. That plays in to my next reply. Third, addressing the form, as many others have also touched on, the issue is not the concept but the execution and the direction of the work flow. To start with, the GM doesn't get player consent to create, the GM creates then informs the player of what kind of content is included. If the player doesn't like it, they can play a different table. This is a "positive charter". In other words, you are told what is included and you make a decision. A consent form is a "negative charter" much like the US Constitution for example. It outlines a list of things that cannot be included and by its very nature gives permission for everything else. As some pointed out, Monte Cook took this for straight from the BDSM world and is all about allowing all but specific abuses. When you do the consent form and say "no spiders" what you're really saying is "a pedo ring is ok as long as it's not protected by spiders". Instead of "hey GM, you didn't mention the necromancer raising dead babies, you're a jerk" it becomes "hey player, you didn't list undead baby abuse in your concern list, you consented". It promotes a level of uneccesary toxicity.

That's really a disengenuous way to frame things. Nobody has an issue with consent

There's a lot of grown men in these comments who can't stand the thought of discussing something _ad hoc_ if it is even slightly unpleasant.

There are sociopaths using a consent form as a means of obtaining permission to breach topics in unsensitive manners. The whole purpose of them is to give the GM permission to make the players uncomfortable. It's there to get permission to abuse the players on the claim that they signed up for it. It is literally copied from the BDSM and Pornography cultures where the form is there to get someone to submit to being degraded.

A tirade? Hardly. A statement. The murder of unborn innocents is the greatest crime perpetrated by our race bar none, but saying it's vile and disgusting is hardly a tirade. The difference here is that if you tell me as a player that abortion is a regularly accepted practice in a society and that my character sees one happen (that's not inserted gratuitously simply to offend) I'm not going to throw a fit about it. It's a fictional world and no babies were actually murdered in the making of it.

Tirade? Man you need to evaluate what you think a tirade is. They have an opinion different to yours on abortion and mine, was it a tirade? Fuck no it was "I think abortion is abhorrent and evil" I personally think woman being forced to carry to term unwanted or dangerous pregnancy is abhorrent and evil. They're both opinions, not tirades. If he went on for 20 minutes that's a tirade, stating their opinion isn't.

Homophobia and racism get circled back to because they're ubiquitous and easily understood by everyone and also fill a very specific niche as a filter. They are easily the most overblown wolf cries in modern society. For example if you say racism is a problem it tells me a few things. A: you can't separate racism directed at you or another real person from racism directed at a fictional character. B: you're the kind who sees racism everywhere, particularly in places where it isn't, an the second an orc is described as beastial and brutish you're in your feelings causing problems. C: you don't particularly want a fleshed out, real world where some people have issues with other races. D: you have significant unresolved trauma that needs to be addressed or E: any number of other issues that could be a marker of other issues. Of those only C and D are not reasons to simply exude a player on principle and those should both simply be a "this isn't a game for me" discussion prior to session 0. As for the rest, that's not how these checklists get used. They get used to coerce the table in most instances. If you're sensitive to something, you should have the adult faculties to excuse yourself politely if they come up and then address it with the GM or other players maturely out if game. If you have something that is brutally traumatizing to the point of a PTSD trigger, you should bring it up to your GM on your own, well ahead of time and understand that you are a minority case so it's your responsibility to make it known. If you have so many triggers it requires a list, you need to put up the dice and get professional help. It's not unsympathetic to tell people "I feel for you, but that's a you problem, not the table's problem"

@@drivinganddragons1818 Maybe a person who deals with X in their real life doesn't want to also deal with it in their fun hobby time.

@@ericvicaria8648 that's fine, it's on them to bring it up or ask questions about the game they're joining. If it's something they didn't think of, politely excuse yourself, bring it up to the GM on the side, or leace the table. No form needed for adults.

@@drivinganddragons1818 Hmm. If only there was some kind of tool to facilitate this kind of communication. Maybe some kind of form.

@@ericvicaria8648 it's called a 5 min conversation with your player, if that much. Or providing an adequate description of your game. You know, GM responsibilities.

Tell us you didn't watch the video without telling us you didn't watch the video. In the 2min 30sec from start to when I move into the vidro topic I introduced the topic, made a channel announcement, and described what was going on with the channel project car. So there was no rambling opinions on anything prior to my commentary on the subject matter and it took less time than some channels' intro themes.

Well first off, on the idea of strawmanning, crit crab literally reads DM horror story reddit threads. That's far from representative and falls under the whole "decent human being" most of us qualify as. Using exaggerated rhetoric to illustrate a point isn't strawmanning, especially since I'm not using it to represent the entire argument. The sad thing is that "a description of a bug" is exactly how this has been used before. I believe crit crab even read that exact same player horror story. As for kids: see the decent human part. As a GM, you KNOW the general age of your players and if you need a form to tell you "don't have sex and vivid descriptions of torture in your game with 14 year Olds at the table" no form is going to save that situation.

That said, I think I covered several very valid ways to use the form or adapt it for use. It's not like an X card that's just an exercise is game breaking.

@@drivinganddragons1818 Haha, he do. He do. However, you're doing it again. I actually mentioned kids in the context of a parent filling out the form. Every parent is different and will have different things they're fine with or don't want their kids to deal with in a tabletop game. Racism, terrorism, and real world politics could fall into that. All I'm trying to say is that your table isn't every table and the players using these forms are very rarely at their first table.

I'm not saying my table, just the majority of. And I would say parents filling out the form is outside the scope of my arguments in general, or at least falls into the same CYA exception as a Con or Public Library. Still, if you are DMing for minors, half that list shouldn't be there period and the people who think it should would almost certainly ignore it anyway.

@@drivinganddragons1818 What is that majority based on though?

Lol #baselife