Jonaya Riley @ FoxGirl Games

Yeah at a certain point your brain just kinda... remembers things with it the way you are now? High school was 25 years ago for me so this is definitely the case. IMHO it's dope as hell - I wish I could've come out in high school and honestly came so close in so many ways, so it feels fitting.

With the additional layer of bullshit that Lyft doesn't show driver last names, she's just making shit up

All this being said, if you clearly set expectations, at that point it becomes the job of the audience to decide their own willingness to engage. A great example of doing this is how Praise the Hawkmoth King sets expectations in the very first pages and makes it clear that backing out is an option

I've spoken before about a style of play that embraces discomfort, and I think there's a place in the actual play space for allowing that to exist, but I also think that clearly letting the audience know, like, hey this show might depict rape at some point, please be cautious going on, is important!

It also puts the onus on the performers to set clear expectations about what the baseline "normal" is for the show. I don't think these are subjects which should be off limits for art to depict, but as an artist you want to consider what you're trying to say and why, and how you communicate that-

Essentially, there's an additional layer of what you want to show the audience. You're making a different kind of art when you make an actual play, which should always be something you're aware of.

I think it also shifts the expectations on the performers to treat the material with more care-

As someone who's currently working on developing an actual play that dives into some of these themes, this is something I'm keenly aware of. It changes the dynamic of what gets presented, how you engage with it, and how you approach safety at the table-

Pavlov's puppygirl hears the sound of a bell and.... well.... I mustn't say

This is a really good point, and that's understandable. I hope that we as a general TTRPG community can make space for people to explore these stories even if they're not their own - it's one of the things about TTRPGs I find most compelling.

💘 HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! 💝
Have more class swap #aerti
Oop- uh, ahem. They look busy. We should....go.

1. Domino
2. Eowyn
3. Andrea Beaumont
4. Beverly Crusher

Happy Valentine's day 🌹

It's a very well-written game (and quite fun to play) - well worth a read through.

Yoooo congrats!

(I'm coming up on 6 years myself)

The others having trouble getting into the canned food again - skill issue, I say.

Do we get to choose our Skarsgård or will one be doled out at random?

I don't know if it's truly possible, and tbh don't really care. I think at a certain point you either call it as far as what you're gonna accept as a baseline for abstraction and observability or spin your wheels forever in an endless debate about it.

or offer any particular reason to subscribe to it. And at the end of the day, even "everything is illusory and nothing is truly observable" is an abstract statement which, if true, would be the remaining sole objective truth.

Like at a certain point you either trust the ability to observe and define a physical reality or you say it all could be an illusion, but I've never found the latter to be an especially useful way of looking at the world. It doesn't really explain anything better than the former-

I think if you're going to allow for the concepts of abstraction and observability, then yes, you're going to have concepts that are objectively true.

I think getting too into the "what if nothing meant anything?" approach is just kinda practically meaningless-

Absolutely. On the subject of cultural norms and such, it's been nice to see TTRPG spaces taking cues from kink communities when it comes to safety-related stuff in general, even outside of a sexual context. Stuff like safe words and boundary negotiation and sharing expectations for the table

Yeah, there's definitely a huge cultural component to it, and it does help a lot to be aware of that as a game designer, player, or actual play performer.

No worries, completely understandable!

Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense and it's something I've noticed a lot as well. A lot of AP tables kinda stumble into what they're doing.

(for us, we're also a fully edited AP which makes doing some of this stuff safely easier than live streamed APs)

I apologize, but for some reason I'm having trouble parsing this - you mean that they tend to not want to involve people they see as "professionals" or that they don't want to see what they're doing through a lens of professionalism?

At our table, we use a bunch of safety tools originally designed for kink stuff - we have a safe word, laid out expectations and boundaries, etc. - but again, this relies on a high degree of comfort with each other and a random cast AP won't have that, so an intimacy coordinator would be amazing!

Okay, I was getting it mixed up with how the fight choreographer handles safety stuff in indie theater!

Interesting - I think that could definitely open up some doors for exploring content with tables that're less closely knit, which a lot of APs tend to be-

I feel like I have at least one TTRPG where this is the case.

Our AP table is very high trust/safety (me and my wife, plus two close friends we've both known for over half a decade) so we're comfortable tackling more intense subject matter, but having the possibility open up for other AP tables would be super cool!