RPGaDay: Safety

When it comes to safety tools, the x card and lines and veils both have their place, but I'm personally a huge fan of the content warning.  Being able to have a hard stop at any time if something comes up is good; avoiding it coming up via a pre-game discussion is better.  But particularly for convention one-shots where tailoring content to the players is rarely possible, nothing beats being able to self-select out of a game before it even happens.

Back in January I was pitching games for A Weekend With Good Friends and had the following conversation (names removed):
Me: Please can substance abuse and cannibalism be added to the content warnings for The Toxic Jewel in slot 6?
P1: now you're just marketing your scenario...
P2: I shall now view any scenario that doesn't include cannibalism and substance abuse as a failure

I've occasionally heard edgelord types complaining that content warnings 'spoil the surprise'.  I've never found this to be the case.  While the players in The Toxic Jewel all know that cannibalism is something that's in the scenario, what they don't know is who, when or where, so it's just as much of a surprise as if I hadn't mentioned it.  And the added bonus for me is that I can be reasonably confident that the people playing are going to enjoy this part of the scenario as the content warning meant they knew what to expect.

Because content warnings aren't only a safety tool.  They're also an enjoyability tool.  Content warnings let me avoid games that would be unsafe for me, but also let me avoid games that wouldn't be fun.  The teen romance aspects of Monsterhearts, the...everything of World of Darkness - knowing what's involved means that that seat can go to someone who'll have a good time with that content, and that's better for everyone.

Content warnings aren't a perfect solution.  After all, people are complex, and may not even be aware that a certain type of content is a problem for them until it actually comes up in game, which is why the x card is still important.  It puts me in mind of rollercoasters.  On the ground under a rollercoaster when it's in motion is an incredibly dangerous place to be, and YouTube has plenty of horror stories about what happens when the trains hit people.  Rollercoasters have safety features like emergency braking to stop the trains if there's someone under the track.  But they also have tall fences to stop people getting close to the track when the ride is active.  The x-card is the emergency brake, while the content warning is the fence.  You need both, but using the latter significantly reduces how often you're going to need the former.

This is an extremely imperfect analogy, and a better one might be having the track clearly visible so coaster wusses like me don't accidentally end up on something with inversions, but my point is, content warnings are a win-win.