Chapter 1, page 4 has a paragraph ("Be a Sensitive Dungeon Master") with some x-card type advice, not to stress your new players.
Apparently I'm a bad DM, because when playing a horror type scenario, I'm used to find out a player's phobias through out-of-game conversations, and then incorporating those triggers in game.
You sound like my kind of dude and I would love that.
Chapter 1, page 4 has a paragraph ("Be a Sensitive Dungeon Master") with some x-card type advice, not to stress your new players.
Apparently I'm a bad DM, because when playing a horror type scenario, I'm used to find out a player's phobias through out-of-game conversations, and then incorporating those triggers in game.
A very cursory flipping through the pages showed no specific side-bars; I'll give it a more in depth reading later tonight, or this week.
The tear-out map of Candlekeep is only printed one side. It's a nice image of the keeps' layout, in a classic clear drawing style, but I don't see much in-game use for it.
I swear, this crap is written under the assumption that DMs are obdurate, unperceptive morons with all the agency of a crappy AI. Like we can't work our game for the group with an understanding of what's acceptable versus what's not.
Quite frankly, think about some of the people that "play" the game now. This group of tourists literally define themselves around victim-hood and trauma. Which, thats literally the worse thing you could do if you were actually trying to recover from trauma, define yourself by said trauma and constantly being on the lookout for "triggers." It's not that they don't think people can't read the room. They just approach everything from a ridiculous activist mindset. Its play theater. Having that kind of shit signals to everyone else that they are woke, empathetic, sympathetic
good people. You see it directly in the shit with Adam Koebel. In his lame ass apology for his "sin" he mentions about how he's going to work with an accountability partner to "work on this." It's all so mind numbing. This mindset literally rejects the idea that you are responsible for your own emotions and feelings, instead putting the onus on how others made you feel.
In a nutshell, that is why I think why Xcards and this bullshit exist. Its an ideological religion put into practice, I can't view it in any other light. It's clergy, priest, adherents, and repentance all rolled up into one.