Notes about Content

Content, Lines/Veils, and Representation in My Games

I try and include a content warning for every in-game post since the start of The GLOW (previous ones may or may not depending of if I had time to edit them). This is the case even when the content really needs no warning. Solo play is a vast field and people have different lines/veils. I cannot say I will flag everything that might bother someone but I at least try to be honest.

I am a big fan of horror so there are often references to things a bit grody, gorey, painful, stress-inducing, and deeply weird. Violence, monsters, and body horror are pretty frequent.

Despite the horror, weird, and mystery themes that frequently provide a back-end of posts there a few topics I consider my lines/veils and rarely get any mention or direct acknowledgement unless I feel like there is not only a great reason for it but that the story necessitates it. Some of these topics include, but are not limited to: rape, sexual assualt, violence against pets/animals, cruelty towards young children, and other forms of sustained abuse. When these topics do surface, I acknowledge them in the commentaries of each post and keep their mention brief.

I am not great at sexy time scenes and it sometimes feels weird to have sexy time scenes in my solo-play (a personal preference). The rare instance in which it comes up I am apt to wink-wink-nod-nod it and move on rather than dwell.

I am not a big fan of games where one species or another character class/type is deemed "automatically evil." There are bound to be exceptions but usually if goblins, orcs, and witches show up they are not portrayed as sword fodder. Some less sentient entities like bugs or beasts might violate this for simplicity but even then.

That being said, my characters—as in the characters I actually play as central the campaign—lean towards the good-hearted types where even if they are bastards they will still risk their lives to save others and will rarely just enter into murder-death-kill mode unless they are threatened. NPCs are more varied and there is a vast spectrum in their behavior, I just try to avoid their behavior being explained simply by a class | race | type stereotype even if other elements of that stereotype are present (such as werewolves being a bit wild, but not automatic murder machines).

Character death happens but I only occasionally play the sort of game where character death should be assumed to be frequent or any kind of mechanical or story goal. Different campaigns will draw different lines. In some, any character "death" is more akin to a temporary and sometimes complicated set-back than an actual death. Perhaps the best explanation I have made for this is from an early post: Steal this Rule: Death is Primarily a Narrative Concept.

I am a pansexual, cis, white male. My game worlds—no matter the genre, time period, or general content/storyline—are considered openly queer-accepting as a default to the degree that all queerness is an acceptable norm. Comments on sexuality and gender tend to the rare and it is even rarer that it might show up as negative comment. This includes being open to gender-identity, asexuality, and polyamory. Characters are usually presented as being whatever gender identity they choose without further comment. It only shows up in more detail if there is a good reason to add more detail. Most of the time I have no concern about a character's birth sex or the state of their current genitals.

I play enough Lovecraftian and cosmic horror tinged things that a few phrases like "going mad," "descent into insanity," or such show up semi-often but I avoid, as best I can, anything like a realistic depiction or value judgement of real-life mental issues. Some exceptions would be things like grieving, depression, and social anxiety because I have had experiences with those—including therapy—but even then I try to avoid speaking for everyone's grief or social issues. A few things like autism, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and others are almost actively avoided because they are way too easy to use as easy plot points and my experience is second-hand.

It is hard to have some high action, fantasy elements without touching upon ableism (in a world where some people have magical abilities and others get +4 to every DEX roll, it can be a quick leap to what a "Level 0 NPC" means in game world terms). I strive to avoid any sort of quality judgements about people in these worlds that have different life stories.

I am disabled in real life due to an unfortunate hiking accident so sometimes playing characters that can just freely run around, run up stairs, walk for miles, etc is my own way to escape my own issues. I miss hiking and such so characters are prone to go places that require me to look at beautiful art of nature scenery to get into the mood. It is nice.

On the other end of my own personal experiences, depite being vegan and atheist I rarely invoke these things as a default state. I do not smoke or drink much but characters might. I used to smoke and drink quite a bit (and eat meat, and attend church) so I have some experience that shows up there but I mostly just default to a "fictionally sufficient" take on these activities.

Despite playing at some gritty, dark storylines (and in the aforementioned "Lovecraftian" horror genre); themes like racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia are basically ignored outside of minor or teaching moments. This includes my more villainous characters who might do dastardly things but I keep specifics vague and rarely approach any "-ism". I refuse to downplay their aspects or real life impacts—and those impacts are massive—but I am also trying to build fun fantasy worlds far past some colonial day. Of course, exceptions abound.

Authority is often to be questioned in my stories and several dwell in a paranoid reality. Those set in the Alabama Weird or other real-world-adjacency might reference real life names or places but it should be understood to not be the actual people and places you might know (alien invasions, strange entities, and hidden truths have altered much of my stories' realities).

Names of books, movies, songs, events, or other real world artifacts should likewise to be considered more second cousins than closer kin to the real world counterparts. Sometimes it can be because I get the facts wrong or misremember a lyric. Other times its because the Gnoles rewrote someone's biological code.