What I want to talk about today is abuse in gaming. There’s been a lot of focus on this recently in gaming communities, but mainly due to the fact that it involves a well-known author in the OSR circles.
That is not what I want to talk about here. What I want to talk about is abuse at the gaming table itself, when it goes from disagreement to downright nastiness, and where loving teasing becomes hateful spite. The abuse can take many forms, whether mental or physical. Typically it’s things like bullying or domineering behavior, either through physical behavior – dice grabbing, body language where the abuser “bigs themselves up” and leans in over the other person – or through mental tricks like deliberately talking over the other person, belittling their contributions and generally making them feel bad.
It can also be something like talking about the other person behind their back. Of course, everyone will always talk ABOUT each other, which is fine, as long as you’re not degrading them or not straight up helping them face up to it if there are any issues. The fact is that there are just as many ways to be abusive as there are people and gaming groups. Over the years, I’ve seen a number of types of bad behavior, things that cannot really be accepted, and how they could potentially have been handled.
1) The first one was an example of a young kid, who had an unfortunate issue with personal hygiene. The simple problem was that he smelled (quite badly) of sweat, and instead of simply telling the poor kid, everyone decided to dodge around the issue, and him, by quite simply avoiding him. After a while of this, the kid started feeling left out (because he was), and he instead became almost like the “gate-keeper” to the gaming club. He’d stick around the new people trying to get to know them, and more or less scare them off.
The situation was finally handled properly, when he was pulled aside, and informed gently that “Hey, you need to do something about the smell. The reason people are avoiding you is not that they don’t like you, it’s that the smell scares everyone off,” and with a gentle admonishment to simply hit the showers before coming to the club, he should be fine. He did, and people almost immediately noticed, and he became quite popular, especially among the newcomers as he was an open and welcoming person. Eventually, it also turned out that it was because he had gym classes just before the club generally opened, so he’d head there immediately to get his gaming fix.
2) The second one was a wargamer, who really should have been too old for the behavior that he displayed. He was an exceptionally sore loser (and almost a worse winner), and would gloat unbearably when winning and sulk like crazy when he lost. He would, in some cases, spend the following weeks telling everyone of his “glorious victory” (his words, not mine), belittling his opponent. It all came to a head one evening when his army lost 3 game sessions in a row to a beginner who had played sensibly and rolled extremely well, in each game. His tantrum (there is no other word for it), included a scathing tirade against the game’s developers, the opponent, the club – throwing his army book across the room, and taking the absolute centerpiece of his opponent’s army (a large and rather expensive metal dragon, that had taken the opponent weeks to put together, with help of some of the veterans from the club), and promptly threw it on the concrete floor, shattering it into myriad pieces.
In that case, the resolution was simple and swift. He was pulled aside, told to apologize and restore the opponent’s dragon, and stop that kind of behavior, or he’d be facing getting thrown out of the group. He chose not to, as he could not see what he had done wrong, and he was removed from any future gaming sessions, while the rest of the group banded together, and apologized to the new player. They went even further, and bought their friend a new dragon, and had it painted up (professionally), all without his knowledge, and presented it to him a few months later.
They themselves admitted that they could have handled this better, if they had faced up to the bully when it turned out that it was a pattern, rather than putting up with it. If they had done so, they might not have had to remove him from their group.
The tragic thing is that gaming groups are created because we are looking for a shared space to have a communal experience. One where we can safely explore avenues that aren’t available to us in real life, or which goes far beyond those normal limits that we have. The idea is that there is room for everyone at the gaming table. And while it is true that you will not always find a home at each gaming table, you should always be able to at least find a table where you can feel at home, even if it might take several tries.
Bad behavior is not something that should be tolerated at a gaming table at all, but it is a fact of life that there are some people who wind each other up like there’s no tomorrow, or where their gaming styles are so different that they lose patience with each other, even if they otherwise get along.
Even for those who are aware, you could be the cause of bad behavior at the gaming table, whether on purpose or not. The point is that bad behavior can happen to anyone if you let your emotions get the better of you, something I have been guilty of myself, and for which I’ve apologized the moment I realized that I had been out of line, and taken steps to avoid it happening in the future.
But that brings me to my point. Abuse should not be tolerated at the gaming table, in any way, shape or form. If you see it, step in. If you’re part of it, find out what’s going on, and make your choice as to whether this is something you can fix, or step away from it. And if you’re the cause. STOP.
Thank you for reading, we’ll return to our normal Pathfinder schedule next week.
Kim Frandsen
Latest posts by Kim Frandsen (see all)
- Finder’s Archive – Crypt of the Eternals - June 2, 2023
