Adult Situations and Game Dynamics

I have been playing various RPGs for over twenty years now. The games, and the stories we tell, have grown with me as I have aged. We started with simple dungeon crawls, hacking and slashing with the only motivator being “get the loot, save the girl (or village...).” As our games evolved, we put more emphasis on role-playing and less on roll-playing, as we added complexity and depth. My characters were more than simply a collection of numbers and statistics, but living, breathing, creations of my own imagination. As our games and stories developed, the maturity of the content did as well and without much warning or fanfare, I found myself in some fairly adult situations inside the game.

The first time this happened was when I was around eighteen. In my high school days, my game of choice was Vampire: the Masquerade and I had decided to run the Giovanni Chronicles with them—a chronicle released under White Wolf’s Black Dog Imprint with the clear “For Adults Only” tag at the bottom of each cover.  One particular character was run by a dear friend. He had wanted to play a child vampire, which I thought would make an interesting character. After the initial transformation, the characters have a few breaks to develop their character and when the child re-emerged, he was a rather twisted individual. Part of this could have been attributed to the character’s clan (link) and part of it could have been attributed to the player, but this character more than any other really squigged some of our players out. After some initial concerns were voiced, I asked him to tone it down a bit, but even at the toned down level we ended up losing two players.

At that time, I didn’t realize how powerful imagination and roleplaying can be for some folks. Because our play is mostly in the mind, it can cause nightmares or trigger emotional responses that even the players were unprepared for. By this point, I had several years of gaming and game mastering under my belt, but I simply lacked the emotional experience of age to understand what a character like this could do to the group dynamics and the individual players. Additionally, I let my own personal feelings cloud my judgment. To me, this was all fiction and it was just a game and couldn’t understand why some players could even get uncomfortable.

Since then, I have found myself in a similar position a time or two. More importantly, I have had the opportunity to be the person who was deeply affected by things that were going on inside the game. One particular scenario involved the rape of a fellow PC and while the aftermath did lead to one of the most intense roleplaying experiences I have had the pleasure of being part of, the action itself (even staged off-screen) triggered in me a sense of helplessness that was utterly non-productive for the game. I felt violated and because it was inside my mind, I couldn’t necessarily leave it at the game table. What was more disturbing was that the game master insisted on us pushing through the events and continuing with the game, as it had happened very early in the session and we still had several hours of our allotted game time.

What these experiences have taught me is the importance of understanding and setting boundaries with the players. Roleplaying games, by their very nature, are creative acts that involve collaboration and sensitivity. I think many people forget that roleplaying has been actively used as part of psychotherapy for decades and we as game masters and players need to understand that we are quite literally playing with people’s minds. As such, we can’t simply assume that people will be able to leave all game elements at the table, any more than we can assume they will leave their real world stresses at the door. For this reason, I would always recommend creating open dialog from the beginning with your players.

What this means is that you will want to create a social contract with your players for your game play. If you are playing with the same group across several different games, you can set down some simple house rules that will apply to all games. One of the first ones I would recommend is the general “rating” for the game play. If the group really wants to stick in the realm of PG-13, don’t try to push an adult game on them. If they are alright with more of an “R” figure out what content they are ok with and what ones are firmly off the table. This can be something like, “I am ok with graphic violence as long as it doesn’t involve children, women, or sexual situations,” or “I am ok with sexual situations as long as they happen off-camera,” or variations of those. I would avoid majority rules situations—if three of the four players are ok with something and the fourth person isn’t comfortable, find out if this is a hard limit. If it is, don’t push that limit. Also recognize that people behave in unpredictable ways and you may need to occasionally re-negotiate if someone reacts in a way they weren’t prepared for.

After setting your base ground rules, the next thing I would recommend is setting up a system to deal with unintended consequences. This can include how to deal with unintended hurt feelings or player irritations with one another, to someone had an emotional reaction to game content that no one foresaw.  By setting this system up, you recognize that sometimes the player bleeds through into the character and you have a plan for how to handle it so that it doesn’t negatively impact everyone’s experience. In most cases, I would recommend some way for the player’s or GM to call a hold to what is happening in game and give everyone at the table some space. This can be a good time for a munchie break or for everyone to get some fresh air, but I generally recommend that this break not be used to re-hash what happened or discuss the game. Give yourself a break and talk about something else. When the break is over, as the GM, double check with the players if they want to continue with the game or break early. I have been in plenty of sessions where player frustrations with one another ran high and we should have just taken a break and played a board game instead of frustrations escalating multiple times over the course of several hours.

Another thing that I would recommend is a post-game decompress. Each game may not necessarily need this, but checking in every few sessions can be helpful. Depending on the dynamics of the group, this can be done as a note from player to GM or in open forum. If you are playing an episodic game, this can be done during the natural downtime between episodes/chapters and allows folks to bring up concerns. One of the hardest parts of GMing is needing to manage not only what is happening inside the game world, but also what is happening outside and between players. Make sure that you are open to revising the game to meet your player’s needs. This is our hobby and the last thing we want to do is create unnecessary stress that can detract from everyone’s fun. Some groups, especially if it is new, may need more hand holding while the dynamics are built. Others that have been long running may only need help when they add new players.

The biggest piece of advice that I can give is this: “Listen and Watch.” Listen to their vocal tone—are they angry, frustrated, or excited? Are they sitting forward in their chair? Are they pushed back from the table, with their arms across their chest? Are they quiet and just rolling dice and not really engaging? All of these are different tells that you can use to gauge the group and what they need and want in the game. Listen to these clues and work with your players to see what they need and you will find that not only are you having fun, but they are as well.