The TTRPG Safety Tools I Use (2022 Edition) 

I sponsor a middle school D&D club. We use red/yellow/green cards. I explain to the students that green is good, yellow is I’m getting frustrated, and red is I’m about to go to a different table. I encourage students to play with different DMs and try different groups. That helps them to understand the difference between the cards. We also use egg timers to keep combat moving. When the sand runs out, you dodge and we move on. Luckily, we haven’t needed the timers (the threat is enough), and red cards only happen when someone tries to rob or stab another player. Yellow cards help the DMs take a pause to talk something out.

One I'd like to slip in is when you play a rude character. Mean characters are fine most of the time, and can be entertaining. It leaves room for development to them being nicer over time, forging relationships or overcoming what has them held. They can also make for good 'party protectors' and have cool, defensive moments. But it's important to be aware, that you're going to be talking quite a lot as these characters. And if there's players with horrible anxiety, or who don't personally know you too well, they can get intimidated or get the wrong impression of you. So I'd personally recommend a decent bit of talk OOC when being a mean character, so you can be bubbly, happy and let them know that you're speaking IC and don't have some sort of vendetta on them.

I feel like the easiest way to handle the "Yellow Light" is simply telling my players red means don't do it, green means pretty much okay, and yellow means I'll talk to you individually about how you'd want it to work, or how it would be comfortable for you.

Thank you for the consent form and all the advice in the video, as a new player who's trying to dm this will be really helpful.

I actually filled out a consent form when I first joined a new group where with yellow I often tended to put a note with it and/or colour it as half yellow half either green or red depending on the thing like romance I coloured yellow/green and noted something to the effect of "it's completely fine from others and I'm fine having my characters involved in situations like flirting for information gathering purposes or something but probably no prevalent romances at least not without prior discussion" because I wasn't super comfortable roleplaying romance without knowing the group well, our first campaign ended with my fire genasi bard (Roast) having a crush on an NPC who was the assassin-princess she saw in a vision and we'd had a few conversations in the last few sessions, I chose not to steal anything from her castle (up to that point no one, not even her new pseudo brother in law, had been given that courtesy) and we decided that they got together and adopted a fairy child later on and we talk about the characters antics because the water genasi druid (Clam, my bard's pseudo sibling) married the king of an allied kingdom so we often make up little scenes like Roast and Zariah (Roast's partner) visiting Clam and Gormo (Clam's husband) and going "Hey Clam, hi Gormo, hey Anthony (Gormo's adopted child from the original campaign) and hello to the rest of you, and I don't think we've met before what was your name?" (In reference to Clam's habit of adopting or various children when they have been played in oneshots and just seem to collect children like Pokémon cards they have at least 6 that I can remember and probably more that I don't) and Clam's family visiting Roast and Zariah and introducing the new kids

I sometimes say something along the lines of "Merika thinks/says/does this. Me, the player, thinks this totally different thing" which usually deals with that. A few times we've had our DM double check how comfortable we all are with something that may be about to come up (because that man has never planned anything more than 3 days in advance in his life) and we can each individually approve or nix it which usually works as well. But then again our group has a fairly high tolerance for these things, our DM probably has the highest aversion to things of all of us

I prefer Lines & Veils to the TTRPG consent form. Veil is very specific: I'm okay with this happening, as long as it goes behind a veil at some point before it gets too graphic or descriptive. The Lines & Veils document I use has Lines, Veils, Ask (i.e., ask before including this thing), and Interested along with a description of each. It also has a column for Notes, where the player can offer any qualifiers ("I'm okay with this so long as it's done in a respectful way," and such) and a questions/clarifications column for me to put any questions I have about it to clarify what the player means if I need it. All of this helps keep it all anonymous in case someone isn't okay with everyone knowing a particular line or veil was them.

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I sort of had this weird moment recently. I am running a game built on a string of prebuilt modules, just because I don't have the mental energy to write from scratch, but I interlace it with custom and character-specific stuff. Got to a part where the game described that the innkeeper's wife had been raped and killed by the bad guys. I knew it was coming, I had preread it. We play games with dark subject matter all the time, I watch and play horror games and movies. I really dint think it would be an issue. But this was the first time something that dark had come up with me running it. And I just found that I..couldn't say it. I still don't know why. maybe it was just a rough week or something. But with me running the game, me saying that it happened to her made me feel like it was my fault it happened to her. Like I did it. But I didn't want to soften the bad guys, I tried to keep the dark tones at least a little. I wound up just implying what happened and I could see that everyone understood what I meant. But boy, that was a surprise, I still don't know if that's just going to be a limitation for me while running the game or if it was just an off moment for me.

There is one thing that people dont talk about, people can sometimes have extremely radically different ideas on how to do things right. To some people, portrayal of LGBT characters for example means... getting their experiences right, and portraying them true to life... to other people escapist fiction should embody an idealized form of our world. Who is right, both are... there is validity to both approached, but we have to be cautious and talk about our approaches to our players... so when they get to the table, they arent shocked by how it is being portrayed and get the wrong impression. I think another good example of this owuld be Ezmereldas prosthetic leg in Curse of Strahd... to some people, Ezmerelda being self conscious and worried about her leg is a true to life experience for people with for people with disabilities like that... to other people, it doesnt embody the escapist fantasy properly (I am not defending how it is written, because regardless of your opinion here the way it was written was... dehumanizing)

All RU-vid dnd creators slowly but surely turn into owlbears. I rechonise the look from the thumbnail.

Prospector voice: Only safety tool I use is a Smith and Wesson with the words Power Word Kill on it. Some Bandits break in while we’re playing dnd they’re gonna have to make 6 dexterity saving throws (This a satire, don’t bring a gun to a dice fight)

I agree with the use of safety tools and, for example, I have seen various tools with which players have been able to intervene, interrupt and change the game (such as safewords and cards intended to affect a session or remove unpleasant topics, plot lines, words or players that make players feel themselves uncomfortable and unsafety). These tools help make the campaign safer and more playable for everyone, especially if there are sensitive players in the group who don't want violence, fighting, blood, dismemberment, racism, colonialism, slavery, or abuse in RPGs due to their own traumatic experiences or for other personal reasons. Cards in particular have been a good and helpful low-threshold tool because not everyone is willing or able to say if something is wrong, painfull or too much, allowing the DM/GM to detect their visual signal. Recently, for example, some Ukrainian asked that there should be no war and fighting at all in my friend's campaign because they themselves have had to experience war and it is traumatic and uncomfortable for them, and in this case the safety tools were useful and helped to better understand fellow players and that they feel (and so we played a campaign without fighting and it turned out good).

Along the notes of how boundaries can change, I was playing in a campaign where our elf wizard was blatantly racist towards dwarfs. Playing a dwarf artificer myself, I started out enjoying the friction that it caused, but in the end, I made a very in-character decision that it was too much and had him walk away from the group, following our dwarf monk who had come to a similar conclusion. It was a great RP moment, but in hindsight, I wish I had handled it slightly differently. The pressure of timing was such that I had to do it as a snap decision, spur of the moment... It was only a few days later that it became clear that it was the catalyst for our entire party making new characters and resetting the campaign.

I would prefer to see the first use of safety tools move even earlier in the process, before session zero, to the recruiting stage for an adventure. It's not ideal when a group has already formed for a specific game for the conversation "Oh your character can't have that backstory because I don't want to play a game with any mentions of slavery in it" to be happening. It'd be far better to have clear ways of communicating about things at the recruitment stage so that it's as easy as possible to form games where people are looking for the same experience.

Safety tools are very useful when playing with complete strangers, but I've never done that. In my group, everyone knows each other. If you played with us, you'd notice one thing, right away. There is a notable lack of spiders in enemy rosters and scene descriptions. One of our players is extremely arachnaphobic, so we leave it out. He never had to tell any of us not spider all over the place, because we know him and don't want to cause him distress. I'll never tell anybody not to play with strangers, but I will tell you to be careful doing it. You must know your own boundaries (which you don't, always), the boundaries of those around you and find ways to articulate all that. If you can't do all of that, don't play with strangers. Find (or construct) a place that is safe and play there.

I’d love to hear if you have any thoughts or advice on introducing safety tools to players, especially new players. I’ve wanted to implement something formal like a consent sheet for a while now, but I haven’t found a good way to bring it up that doesn’t come across as “welcome to D&D, complete stranger! Now please give me a list of stuff that will upset you.”

Before games I prefer to use "lines and veils" meaning lines are a hard "no" and veils are things that you can allude to, but shouldn't be explicit about. So a line for S.A. would mean it never comes up as a plot point in the story. It never happens. A veil for S.A. would be a person asking the party to track down the perpetrator of the attack without ever describing the actual assault.

I have played with the same group for nearly twenty years now and we don't use safety tools. That is great for this group, but leaves me completely naked for if a new person ever was to join the group.

I play in Roll20, I use a mix of X and traffic cards. I have macros in place that when activated only I and the player that activated see, and then I deal with it accordingly.

When my DM gave us a similar red/yellow/green consent form, I also was confused by the yellow category, so I tweaked it when I issued the same type of boundaries form to my players. As a player I noticed that I was totally okay with some topics, but when they happened to my character, they hit a little too close to home. My boundaries form included, along with the red and green: yellow was 'warn me,' orange was 'do not affect my character with this, and blue was 'offscreen only.' Slightly more complicated but it worked for my group and I think it was helpful to be more specific

Sounds like yellow would just mean, we need to have a talk about this.

In regards to the TTRPG consent form, I tell my players, "Yellow = needs further discussion." aka "OH, we'll talk about it."

On the "out of character" moment, I had a character that caused a lot of those. He was a young idealist who really saw the world in black and white. I had "I the player am having a blase, Julian-Pierre is having the worst day of his life" and other players "I [player] love what you're doing with the character, but [my character] wants to punt him off a cliff" and even one of the best callback moments way later. That first character died tragically to gelatinous cube and months later one of the other characters was asked what the worst thing that's happened to them was and they responded "well for a while we were stuck with [describes my first character], I hated that guy" and I had to mute myself because I was uncontrollably laughing so hard. Also on the "yellow" topic, my game has an anonymous combined consent sheet and everyone was encouraged to list their caveat for any yellow item. A good example was around "real world religions" which we had as a caveat of "Mythology is cool, but don't get into any religions that are actively practiced today" And one final one, for the X card without a physical X card. I have the "No it didn't" rule which is to say if ever we hit an unexpected hard stop any player at any time can say "Not it didn't" or "No they didn't" and immediately I as the DM will say "I'm sorry, you're right. What actually happened was..." and I also reserve the right to take a break to figure out how to retcon some content out. And on that line, there's also the "Fade to black" rule which is to say if the event itself doesn't need to be edited out but a player just really doesn't want to hear it described they can just say "Fade to black" and then we time jump to as soon as that's over. (eg. "adult fun time" or "very unpleasant information gathering"). I even broke the tension on a fade to black between a consenting player and NPC with having the player roll athletics against the NPCs CON for [lets say effectiveness], everyone else role perception to see who overheard that particular interaction, and then time jumped to the next morning where the party got to chime in on what they overheard. And in that event it was actually my personal fade to black, I'm totally down to RP romance and flirtation, but as soon as it turns into ERP I'm out. TLDR, great safety tools and I agree that good tools makes games more fun not less.

Implementing safty tools can be a bit of a hurdle. Especially when you are playing with older people (two of my players are approaching 50 and have played for decades) , or people who are not as much online as I am. I want to put plenty of safty tools in place, just in case, but I also don't want my players to feel coddled, and I am mildly afraid, that I'll come across as a bit of cry baby if I bring them up all at once. For now I have started with dicussing hard and soft limits during session zero, although I am sure we'll uncover more of those once we start playing. The next thing I want to implement is a sort of after care, meaning to check in with my players after each session and ask them how they feel and kinda just include it in a general feedback round. For your Strahd example I might ask a question like "So, our villian has been dialing up his psycho games, this session. How do you feel about it?". If it turns out my players felt like it was approaching their limits, I'll use that situation to bring up further safty tools like traffic light cards. I think it's much more likely that my players will accept safty tools more easily and take them more seriously, when they have the reason for them fresh in their minds. As you said, some people might feel like safty tools are stifling, I think that's especially true when thinking about them in the comfort of a safe situation and can seem very diffrent in light of an uncomfortable situation. I am also definitly going to encourage my players to reason out their characters behavior every once in a while and make quick mentions of how their own feelings differ from their character. I am also keeping my eyes open for other safty tools that I could try, especially for things that I can implement in subtle ways. Getting pushed out of your comfort zone is half the fun of ttrpgs, but I do want to make sure that I do it without traumatizing my players.

Great video, Mike!

These sound like good and important things to incorporate into games for groups that haven't played much ttrpgs or for groups you aren't super familiar with. I haven't had to use any of these in such a structured way, but I've played almost exclusively with groups that I am very close to. If you don't already have super healthy and open communication, I think you probably need these methods.

At my rotating short campaign table (We play lots of lightweight games, usually rotating every week, with a couple campaigns of short arcs to get invested in over time) we use simple "Lines and Veils". A Line never comes up, is never referenced, and is never alluded to. For all intents and purposes it doesn't exist in the world we're creating. Veils exist- we just don't dwell or focus on them. We usually talk more about veils as we establish them- IE, child abuse. We usually veil that; it happens, sometimes to people our characters encounter or in backstory, but never on-screen and never as a focal point of a plot or story. Animal Death is a line- we just don't include that, ever. We are also human, so sometimes we forget. It's an in-person game, so when someone makes a mistake, usually someone's face is enough of a reminder. We had some friendly sled dogs who were alluded to be murdered in a recent game, and it only took one look at my face for the DM to do "Right, that's a line, we're backing that up." And then he easily turned it around into a really cool moment later where our befriended sled dogs actually saved us and took out some baddies. Much better for everyone, in our personal game. I've also played in a game with a DM who "didn't believe in safety tools" and it was a problem, over and over and over again. I personally had to talk to him numerous times about things I and other players were uncomfortable with, and we had to fight him on it just about every single time. He'd try and argue why it was "realistic" or "necessary" to include topics that one or more players were deeply uncomfortable with, and wouldn't listen when we tried to compromise. If he did 'give in', he'd always subtly punish us as players for daring to challenge his personal feelings. I will never play another game without safety tools- if a DM chooses not to use them, that's fine, but they'll be playing without me.

The last time I ran D&D, I handed out the consent checklist and had everyone give them to me, and then anonymized the list of no-gos. Anything that was a yellow/"on the fence" topic, I discussed with the individual player to know what they meant by that. I was actually really glad I did because I had a player who just could *not* with any type of insect or spider. 1. I was glad I asked so I could tell the other players so no one shape-shifted into a spider or anything, and 2. there were some bugs in the thing I was running, but they weren't important to the plot, so I just replaced them with oozes with a grapple ability. I also definitely have some things I'd like to run where I'm definitely including content notes in the campaign pitch because the content isn't for everyone.

I dont know if this will be seen as the video s a year old, but there are some nice modules to use the X-card virtualy. It even works slightly better virtually over the standard one in person because it can be completely anonymous if the group wants it.

Our table does the out of character check in plenty, ie "this is horrible, but out of character this is awesome" type stuff. Currently playing in a curse of strahd game and I don't know how we would all play without making sure everyone is still good every once in a while

As someone who’s never had to use a safety rule nor needed one made. This video is based, DND is about bringing friends together around a table and having a good time! Not pushing friends away.

“safety tools are bad” lol The only time I've found them unnecessary is when the entire group is made up of long-term friends who already know each others' 'don't go there' topics

This is interesting. I always thought there was universal understanding of what the yellow meant on a consent form like this. The b d s m term is soft boundary. The notion is that you need separate consent for that thing every time and anyone can pull their consent for that at any time.

In the middle of watching your video, I got an email from MCDM with their own version of a safety tool kit. Great minds and all that :)

I think it's important to talk to the DM not just fill out the sheet. I'm a citizen of a native American tribe (Muscogee), i don't want w*ndig or sk**walk mentioned at all. Just the mention of those things bring bad luck. IDK how much exactly I believe in the stuff but I'd rather just not have them mentioned at all under my roof. So I'll tell the DM that. My issue isn't "cultural appropriation" or anything it's the name being mentioned at all. So I'll request not to have them mentioned. But topics like sexual assault or pedo stuff ect. I'm okay with having happen off screen and as long as it's properly presented as a purely evil act. Slavery I'm okay with being treated as somewhat grey. Like in dragon age there are some grey areas when it comes to the subject and I find that interesting. So i think it's important to talk with your dm, especially if limits aren't as simple as "no" and "yes". It's up to you as the player to inform the DM of your limits.

I think Yellow means "You are okay with it existing in world, but not appearing On Screen"

I encounter the ttrpg form only once, for our current campaign, and my issue is that because it is a form that we all fill individually we lack a real group discussion around it. I do understand that this is an uncomfortable discussion to have, especially when you are playing with a new group made of strangers. But I think because of that, my group took it only as a tool useful for the dm to make a story comfortable for everyone and forgot that players can also bring up those uncomfortable subject. It personally really stressed me out at time not only because I have strong trigger and what if the other players brought them up but also what of *I* accidentally trigger someone else around the table? I eventually talked about it to my dm so that's something that should be better handled in the future

I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts regarding interrupting player actions. I didn't do a TTRPG consent form but did ask each of my players individually and privately for their triggers. While I will never broach any of their triggers, I am worried that a player at my table might, and the player affected might lack the confidence to stand up to say that they feel uncomfortable.

I think the biggest issues I've had with safety tools have been less about safety tools themselves and more about cross-cultural conversations. I've found that a lot of Western people treat certain types of violence as if they're inherently fantasy. Which makes sense because they're not confronted with it in reality. There are a lot of things I'd actually love to have in the games I play in, but I don't really feel like the people around me understand the issues enough to treat with respect. So far it's been easier to just say 'no' and mark it as red then try to have those conversations. And tbh some people will ignore that red mark anyway. Or forget it's there because it's not an issue for them.

This is such an important thing to discuss in session zero. In the Curse of Strahd game I play in the DM made especially sure to go over things, with it as a horror game, to make sure everyone knew generally what to expect and was comfortable. But in any game IMO it's a good idea. Also, boundaries regarding flirting/romance, etc. Every game I'm in has very strict rules about consent. In one game, our characters can totally have romance, or run around being as promiscuous as Scanlan Shorthalt, and the DM role-plays flirting with us, we're all comfortable with each other and we have a great time. In another game the DM isn't comfortable with that so we don't have it, and it's not really a big deal. PVP is one thing that makes me wary. I've just seen too many out of character hurt feelings, to the extent where PVP stresses me out and makes me worry that people are really actually mad at me out of character. Not because I can't distinguish the two, but because it has happened to me. I've had people be upset with me because of arguments from game. Emotions can run high. In a past game we paused a big argument because, when it was going south, I asked if perhaps I should make a different character that's more compatible with the group. I wound up not doing that and we were all fine. But I do think checking in can be important during those situations. Make sure everyone's okay, and is still having a good time, even if their character is upset. If people are not having a good time, something needs to be changed. Communication is key. :)

I feel that the biggest flaws of the ttrpg consent sheet is 1. The wording on the green light, more specifically the "i am enthusiastic" part, it makes it weird to fill that in on certain subjects. And 2. It doesn't really work for one shots.

I try to remember this sort of thing but... I gotta admit I get so overwhelmed trying to remember even just one person's info... and then figuring out HOW to approach things and HOW one thing like "s3x stuff makes me uncomfy" ((this is actually one of my own sensitivities)) translates into... every other possible situation and all the little nuances... ((just from my own example : i DO get uncomfy BUT I also understand it can be used for good of the story and well... I like Mass Effect and its romance stuff so im willing to deal with few moments of discomfort)) i dont even know all the nuances for my OWN triggers... even less so understanding others'... for context i do have communication difficulties and am adhd/autistic so that probably has a big influence. I still struggle to some extent with the hadozee thing as i see separation because hadozee arent humans and my brain just... struggles to understand the connections others are apparently seeing? ((though your video on it helped me alot)) following that I also struggle to understand how to take that info and apply it to other different situations... I've actually felt like rage quitting everything creative and ttrpg related because of my struggles with this all honestly..... its overwhelming and difficult to remember and know how to actually apply everything... i become afraid of... describing anything... ((i've also always been a "perpetual foot in mouth"/"steps on toes and doesnt realize" individual from being very blunt and just... not understanding other people... even when they try to give me their trigger warnings... because my brain thinks of all possible contexts for a subject and wonders which contexts are safe and which arent and how can i know and maybe its just best to avoid everything altogether and then i just... cant roleplay or become afraid of dming...)) sorry for length and rant here... i hope this made sense... i want to incorporate this stuff but i get so overwhelmed and confused...

That whole hypothetical about "eye stuff"... It's me. I have a huge phobia about occular trauma for some reason, and I would be very happy not to have to encounter it.

I've been playing for about 6 years and never used safety tools and never had players have an issue.

I don't really know how to use them, but I know roll20 has safety tools like xcards that you can add to your game.

I am starting a new campaign in 2 weeks with people I have never met before so I have been thinking about these things a lot. The consent form you reference has a decent number of blank lines that could be used to explain what yellow means in a given category, but I agree yellow is vague in that it could mean many things.

As a fellow Strahd dm I'd love to see a video on how you characterize him if that'd be something you'd be interested in doing! Great video as always 👍

Safety tools are something that seemed really odd as a player coming from 3.5 and the pre-mass appeal of D&D days, and I thought it was something a bit extra and unnecessary, until another player mercilessly killed a NPC's pet in a game and I got absolutely devastated. So now I always tell everyone to let me know if there's anything that shouldn't come up, less formal than a red/yellow/green system, but so far it seems to work.

I play online and we use x-card, either by just saying something like 'I'm x-ing that' or posting [x] in text chat. I also try to be vigilant about content warnings as they come up. I'd take yellow as 'discuss this above table and proceed with caution'

Daaaamn, the pause option never occurred to me, despite being a videogame player for so long. That is so good.

This is a good channel. I like Mike.

I am lucky to never had been part of a group where anything besides the obvious is off limits. Call of Cthulhu is barrels of fun!

I have a "lines and veils" conversation in my session zero. Lines are hard "no" topics. I will begin by presenting mine: as a DM, I do not have sexual violence, child harm or death, or homophobia/transphobia of any kind in my games. I will not depict it, I do not want it from players even when framed as "evil" etc. I invite people to either share their lines in the call if they are comfortable OR to message them to me privately, and lines will not appear in game. Then we'll discuss veils and the various ways they're handled. So for example, in my games sexual content is fine but fades to black and happens off screen. Things like slavery can exist in the world (unless it's a line for one of my players!) but 1) we do not play big arcs around the topic and 2) if these things come up they are framed as unequivocally evil and the players have a chance to defeat the people committing the evil. And some veils might simply be avoiding very graphic/detailed description of something (saying you shoot the monster through the eye might be okay but then describing the eyeball popping or whatever may NOT be okay). I give space for players to share their veils either in the call or later, in private. And finally I tell them that if something comes up in a session that wasn't covered but that makes them uncomfortable, they can always ask me to pause, rewind, or fast forward.

I have a long-gestating campaign and I'm torn between providing a questionnaire, and asking for free-form text responses. The first method tends to lead the audience and may be uncomfortable, while people can overlook common issues in the latter and response rate will be lower.

Thank you for talking about safety tools! It's super important and I swear not enough people actually know about them. None of my current players had heard of using them for D&D. I really like you giving your players the form with some items marked as red already so that they know where you stand too.

I'd love a video on that "pitch packet" or "one sheet" you mentioned!

I play online and we use the X cards, Roll20 lets the GM pass out custom cards to players. We haven't had to use them but we do have them.

I personally think safety tools are super important. Even playing with my oldest friends, judging for example how much sexuality would be okay in a campaign is really hard without actually talking about it. In my experience it's especially problematic for us because some of us are on the asexual spectrum with varying sensitivity to the topic plus we are simply not used to talking about these topics. And when it's a new group I don't really know it's anyone's guess who comes to the table with some past trauma or phobias I don't know about.

You mentioned that using commentary/out of character voice does not help with graphic depictions and such, but it can. You can say "the beholder is killed violently", which gets past "eye stuff" without lessening the impact. This could even be used in noncombat situations, depending on table preferences. What if you have expertise on Deception, and need to essentially gaslight someone with it? You can just say that you do, without including how it works or what exact words are being said. The dice can take care of the resolution and our minds can fill in the blanks trough context. I haven't used that last one myself, but I'm interested if you have experienced anything similar.

I go the other way with this line of thinking while still being up front. I outline overall themes likely to play out, along with any objectionable material often associated with those themes. I hide the plot but telegraph some expectations of experience. I present it not as a consent form, but a waiver form, with the option to discuss any triggering deal breakers in private to come up with an accommodation for that player. I don’t do any weird stuff nor do I entertain grotesque levels of evil with my DMing either, pretty standard long form fantasy adventuring is what I offer. But because I live in a geographic region where my players will 100% have radically different cultural views, the waiver is my best workaround for inclusivity that also lets folks a little less open minded than others be exposed to an inclusive diverse table. I’m an effective people manager so I prefer a diverse player pool and the diversity of thought it brings to any table. I’m not afraid of managing ideological disconnects or working around folks traumas and biases. I just happen to go the waiver route, let folks decide for themselves what they are up for.

Safety rule 1, Don't eat the dice

The best safety tool is a good session 0 where you as the DM layout what you will include in your games and what you will not include in your games. Any new players that join my group I layout what I will do and won't do, what topics may and may not arise in my games and what I expect from them as players. If you are not comfortable with something happening in game speak to me after the game, not during and most certainly do not interrupt the game. After every game I review with my players, asking what they think about the game, did they have a good time and is there anything we need to discuss. If I have a player join my game and they can not handle the content after me warning them in session 0 I simply tell them that this may not be the table for them, wish them well and ask them to leave. I am not going to change the types of games I run for a single person when everyone else is enjoying them and I recognize that my games are not for everyone.

I think any "traffic light sheet" handed out at the start of a game should have a section where the player can fill in "what is not allowed with your Yellow Light items?" where they can fill in for each one how comfortable they are with each thing. Take spiders, for example. are you okay with them being described as set dressing ("spiders skitter away from your torchlight as you progress into the dungeon")? What about fighting spiders? If fighting them is okay and you use maps, can the miniature/token be a spider shape, or does it need to just say spider? what about spider allies/animal companions? half-spider Arachne-type NPCs?

I was playing a campaign virtually with people I had never interacted with prior. Two of the characters were extremely antagonistic towards each other. Both their text and spoken interactions seemed to me that the hostility was real. Important for context is that I joined the campaign part way through, so, I had no history with the two "problem" PCs. When I voiced my concerns after a few sessions, I basically was told by the one player to (essentially) "mind my own business." The one player even went so far as to lecture me via PM on the campaign Discord server, and wouldn't listen to my perspective.

I've just been starting up a Deadlands: Weird West campaign recently, and the first thing that came up was one player wanting to play a Native American Shaman and another player immediately feeling uncomfortable with this decision. We had a session 0 to work out what people did and didn't want to deal with in-game.

I feel a lot of the pushback on safety tools comes from two camps.... 1) Misanthropic gamers who truly don't care about other people and/or exist with inflated ideas of what is an isn't okay in their limited world view. or 2) folks who have always played with familiar groups or even with close-knit friend groups where the idea of needing to discuss limits seems pointless because they know each other so well. There is a possible third camp, though I feel this folds into either of the first two. 3) Folks who have always been using forms of safety tools in a more informal manner and are put off by the codification and explicit delineation of safety tools in print form or as exposited to them by youtubers. I know that when I first listened to safety tools explained my first reaction was something akin to "Um...duh..." In the 40+ years i have been gaming, it has mostly been with friends made through gaming or brought into gaming by me and my gamer buddies. We knew what buttons to push and not to push. We knew each others' livres, traumas, likes and dislikes. My wife is one of my frequent players and i know there are topics to not really go near or at least not dwell on. I have DMed for my kids for goodness sake. There is this strange perception that safety tools are somehow new to gaming and the product of "woke"(I really hate that word) mindsets. The truth is folks have been using them since the earliest days of the game. I think it is telling that some of the earliest works speaking to the point come from people firmly ensconced in the old-school. I remember playing in online text-based games in the 90s and calling "FTB (fade to black) when a scene came up that I didn't want to play through. Even earlier than that we knew that some of our friends, even as young as 10 (in the early 80s) were sensitive to domestic issues in games or racial prejudice. It's always been there.

I do X-card when I play a Discord game. I create a dedicated channel called "x-card" and tell the players that if they ever feel uncomfortable, or triggered, or just plain bored and wanna move on from something, they should go to this channel, @everybody (which sends a message to everybody on the server) and write that they wanna move on from that certain thing. So for example: "@everybody The spiders in this encounter are grossing me out, can we move on?". No need for explaining why spiders gross you out (although you can if you feel like it), and then we either change whats going on (like replacing the spiders with another creature), or just jump ahead.

I will never use that. I like to just talk with people like adults and set expectations before the campaign

speaking of consent, it seems like everyone here in the comment agrees with Mike. I guess that ban hammer swings regularly.

I'll admit this all sounds quite weird to me. I played a few years ago, but the group was mostly family and had been playing together for a good while so they didn't need to ask. I guess it can be useful when the group doesn't know each other that well.

These are called "trigger warnings", no? Never heard this referred to as "safety tools"

Traditionally, we play D&D with people we know...friends. Any decent person is going to care about his friends, but that relationship is also one of pre-existing familiarity. I hate the name "safety" tools because of the underlying presumption in the word that the game is otherwise unsafe. However, in the 5E era, particularly since the lockdowns, I'll bet there are far more people playing D&D online with virtual strangers than there are pre-existing groups of friends sitting down to play. It is only prudent when you're unfamiliar (or less familiar) with a fellow player, to get to know them enough to know what will make them deeply uncomfortable. As you said (quite well), we want everyone at the table to enjoy themselves. Like so much of the "problems" I hear about at tables, it really comes down to treating other people the way you would like to be treated. That's common courtesy and we could sure use it more than ever these days.

The discord server mute button is a fantastic tool

Is this a parody video? .... I can't tell.

the two dislikes are from cringe chuds who cant handle the fact that all dnd players arent the same

I had a player that was ok with commiting infanticide but wasn't ok with being graped by a dragon

SOooo, a PC at my table, did the whole "seduce the NPC Guard chicky"... which turned into an actual relationship. With pay off. For which, I made her pregnant on a NAT 20 - d20 ROLL (I've had a PC at the table do essentially the same thing, but genders were reversed, and they managed a nat 1 - and that's how Yuan'ti now pass on diseases to the common folk). ANYWAY, the Guard chicky had fallen under a dark sleeping curse, placed by a local Necro Lord that was trying to draw strength from the populace. Her baby has been tainted by dark magic and grew faster and unpredictably. This has/will freak out the NPC. But enough about her. Another NPC in my game has been a henchman for the group, particularly working for one other PC, the Yuan'ti warlock. Anyway, he got his hands on a forbidden dark magic book by accident, that no one took off of him, after they knew he took it, He will thus start turning dark, and the plot line will follow that he will try to identify, steal, and corrupt the child, stolen from the mother and father PC, and try to turn the child full Dark. Can't wait. Ohh, where was I going with this. Ohh, no consent was asked for, nor any actions nor narrative forbidden me. There is trust in on open and mature relationship. And it will go places, and it will get farked up. But we will grow, we will learn, and we will enjoy it... mostly ;)