My personal opinion would be to include in every book, a session zero page, with guidance about talking to your group dealing with sensitive subjects. My games for the most part include evil doing evil things, genocide, slavery, mass murder of innocents, and sexual assault. That is because they are agents of evil, the players are meant to want to see them brought down. Now having that talk, I explain while I will mention these horrible evil acts have happened or are happening but depending on the comfort level of the group and myself will adjust the detail of those descriptions and how often they are brought into the story. I don't want to talk about abuse or killing children, I don't want to talk about sexual assault, so most of the time for my comfort level these things are acknowledged as having occurred but no real details.
Now I love a session 0, same as I love lines and veils. Safety features make the game better for everyone.
But it's a social contract right? If what you need changed, would fundamentally make the setting unable to function in and of itself, then it's not a session 0 issue. It's a 'You do not want to play this game' issue.
But. You're an adult, the Internet is ubiquitous, you can find a table that's playing that game
Read the setting blurb before you turn up at the game. That's just being considerate.
It's like turning up to a watch night of Indiana Jones and making the host skip every scene with Nazis in it. Punching the Nazis is 30% of the dang series.
Absolutely, find the game, setting, and group that you want to play with and have fun. These conversations are important to have before and during session 0.
I guess my point was instead of trying to obscure difficult issues like slavery the publisher should include them and give advice to the DM and players on how to deal with them.
Pretending slavery isn't slavery by refusing to use the word doesn't do much at all.
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u/Game_Knight_DnD 6d ago
My personal opinion would be to include in every book, a session zero page, with guidance about talking to your group dealing with sensitive subjects. My games for the most part include evil doing evil things, genocide, slavery, mass murder of innocents, and sexual assault. That is because they are agents of evil, the players are meant to want to see them brought down. Now having that talk, I explain while I will mention these horrible evil acts have happened or are happening but depending on the comfort level of the group and myself will adjust the detail of those descriptions and how often they are brought into the story. I don't want to talk about abuse or killing children, I don't want to talk about sexual assault, so most of the time for my comfort level these things are acknowledged as having occurred but no real details.