In my opinion, good table governance can always substitute for the situations you would actually want safety tool, but a safety tool--being a dedicated implement--can't do certain things which table governance can. The tradeoff is that it means moving past the idea that the GM is God of the Game because you have to run a formal mechanical process. I'm sure that's going to piss some grognards off.
Does not follow. Look, being "God of the Game" means exactly that. Within the game setting/world/rules however you want to define it, the GM has last say, and often first and middle say as well. It's a necessary part of a traditionally run game (i.e. absent certain meta game mechanics put in place to deliberately farm some of that responsibility out to the players in a formal way) but even then, someone has to do it.
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"Table Governance" for normal people, in normal situations, is the same as it is at every other non-gaming social activity. Excluding the dicks, if something comes up, you talk about it, no mechanical widget necessary.
No, the GM does not have to have universal say on the game. This is literally the Divine Right of Kings argument applied to games; we do have government models which do not require a single player (and the GM is still a player) to exert perfect control.
My point in my prior post is that while play without safety tools is quite possible, it often has unspoken requirements which leverage GM experience, which puts RPGs in an awkward position where the GM (and often the players, too) need years of experience to play. Saying "don't be a dick," is useless because people can and do make mistakes. Worse, this is basically the same purity standard Woke SJWs use, it's just applied in the reverse manner. Yes, kicking players is inevitable, but you should really design your game's mechanics so its rarely necessary, and when you force the conversation to be "play with the X-Card or play without one" with no other options provided, it doesn't really matter. Both options lead to kicking players being the primary outcome.
The problem with X-Cards specifically is that the RPG market has largely either fallen into one of two categories:
- You don't think safety tools are useful or helpful, or
- You don't see the flaws with the safety tools you are using.
I think the X-Card is a useful tool, but it's also a critically flawed one. But here we're caught in a Catch-22 where the people who recognize it's flaws aren't interested in improving it because
they personally are GMs of 10-20+ years experience who generally run curated groups, and
they personally don't need them, preferring the freedom of manual control.
That's a valid decision on a per-group basis, but as a collective, that decision poses a problem.
The X-Card should have been a first generation tool, a temporary fill-in tool until games developed better tools. However, no one actually bothered to come forward with less disruptive tools in a reasonable timeframe, and now we're stuck with the maximum disruption X-Card as an almost mandatory fixture of public play in an environment where our SJW-ridden culture encourages creating a following for yourself by creating disruption and tearing others down. So, I've basically given up on the idea of Con-Play being of any quality for a very long time.
However, perhaps this will get you to see what I'm thinking of.
Each person gets 2 x-cards. They can use each once. After that they have to leave as the game is clearly overly triggering.
This is assuming a convention game or open table in which the GM has no control over who plays.
Hopefully you can get sane players to goad the x-card usage early to get the problems out of the way.
That leads me to think that Parliamentary rules might help, where generally someone has to Second the use of a game-disrupting tool. Here's a quick brainstorm.
- You start the campaign with three Call For A Vote cards. When you play a Call For A Vote card, you describe the problem with the game as is and propose an Amendment to the game's Social Contract. Other players may propose additions or changes, but it still counts as your Amendment.
- To immediately change what is happening in the game, you must call for a vote and more than 2/3rds of players at the table agree with you. This is Passing with a Supermajority.
- To change the game in the future (but not in the present) you must call for a vote and more than 1/2 of players at the table agree with you. This is Passing with a Simple Majority.
- The GM's vote counts double.
- A Call For A Vote card returns to you indefinitely if your Amendment passes.
- You may Spend a second Call For A Vote card on a failed Call For A Vote to create a Hard Veto. A Hard Veto destroys both Call For A Vote cards used (meaning it can only happen once.) The rest of the table then (minus you) votes whether they want to Bar you from Play (requires a Supermajority) rather than accept the Veto.