The Hidden History of TTRPG Safety Tools - Building Safer Tables Part II

This is Part 2 of our Building Safer Tables series. Read Part 1: Why Your Table Needs Safety Tools

I've recently started running games for strangers in public spaces, and I quickly discovered that without my usual pregame safety discussions, it can be genuinely challenging to know where players draw their lines in the sand. This gets further expounded by circumstances like a table full of children, or roleplay in a therapeutic setting. One of the companies I GM for uses John Stavropoulos's X-Card, and I wasn't exactly sure what it was when I first started, so I started doing some digging.

Six hours later, I found myself deep in academic papers, forum archives, and design manifestos, realizing just how rich—and surprisingly recent—the history of TTRPG safety tools really is. What I discovered was a story of innovation born from necessity, community wisdom emerging from crisis, and designers solving problems that the broader gaming world didn't even know it had.

Understanding the Landscape: What Are We Talking About?

Before diving into the chronology, it's worth establishing what we mean by TTRPG safety tools. These fall into several broad categories: pregame boundary setting, in-the-moment interventions, post-game processing, and cultural framework tools.

Pre-Game Boundary Setting is any safety tool you implement before the game begins. It includes tools like Lines and Veils, Session Zeros, and consent checklists that establish expectations before play begins. These tools allow you to sit down and dig into the fiction a little faster, because you’ve done some of the legwork ahead of time.

In-the-Moment Intervention involves real-time tools like the X-Card, Script Change, and Cut/Brake that allow players to modify or halt content during gameplay. These tools have to be discussed before hand and agreed upon of course, to get the full benefit.

Post-Game Processing tools include debrief structures, Stars and Wishes, and other reflection tools that help groups process difficult content after sessions. Sometimes it can be challenging to step out of character and back into your real self. Even actors disrobe from the role after the curtains drop.

Cultural Framework Tools are like Open Door policies, Safety Welcomes, and other practices that establish ongoing norms rather than specific interventions. We’re not talking cultural in the sense of how different people from around the world engage in safety; it’s more about establishing the culture directly at the table.

Each category emerged from different design challenges and community needs, often years or even decades apart. The story of how they developed reveals fascinating insights about who was solving what problems when and why.

2004: The Edwards Revolution - Lines and Veils

The story begins with Ron Edwards, a biology professor turned game designer, grappling with a very specific problem in his game Sorcerer. Edwards had created a game about moral corruption and supernatural horror, themes that demanded mature content and careful handling.

"This supplement rips the veil off of playing Sorcerer, to bring the real-person interactions positively into the content of play... Games don't role-play - people do. Who are you, and the members of your group? How do your own emotions and gender dynamics influence your art?" Sex and Sorcery (2004)

Edwards introduced Lines and Veils in his 2004 supplement Sex and Sorcery. They weren’t meant to be universal safety tools, but practical solutions for handling sexually charged content in horror gaming. Lines were hard boundaries that content couldn't cross. Veils were soft boundaries where content could exist but stayed out of the eye of the player.

Edwards originally envisioned these as emerging organically during play, not as pre-negotiated boundaries. As he noted in a 2006 forum comment: "Everyone seems to think I've advocated setting that through discussion prior to play, and bluntly I think it's a fucking terrible idea. I like finding them through necessity and opportunity…" The tool was meant to be responsive, not prescriptive.

This distinction matters because it reveals the original design philosophy: Edwards was designing toward emergent consent rather than preventive barriers. His approach assumed that groups could recognize and address boundary issues as they arose through play, rather than trying to anticipate every possible problem in advance.

The genius of Edwards' system was its flexibility. As one more contemporary interview reveals, Edwards himself used it fluidly: describing how in one game, when a player said "Can we not look into the tubes?" regarding horrific experiments, Edwards simply noted to himself, "I'd better veil that." The scene proceeded with players understanding enough to fill in details privately without explicit description.

2002-2006: The Forge Community and Cultural Shifts

Edwards wasn't working in isolation. He was part of The Forge, an online community of indie game designers who were revolutionizing how RPGs approached narrative, player agency, and social dynamics. This community provided the cultural context that made Lines and Veils possible and necessary. There is a LOT in there. It's like diving into the collective minds of a community dedicated to the craft. It's easy to fall down a rabbit hole here.

The Forge designers were creating games that demanded more from players emotionally and creatively. Games like Dogs in the Vineyard, Sorcerer, and later Burning Wheel dealt with moral complexity, personal trauma, and heavy themes that traditional D&D campaigns might avoid entirely. It’s a lot to read through, and I won’t claim to have done any exhaustive deep dives into the Forge Archives, nor have I spoken to the man himself. Still, everywhere you look in the Forge, you can see members of that community who really care about safety because safety allows the participants to tell better stories. I’ve bookmarked a few pages for deeper dives in time.

There are newer publications that also make this deep dive possible, if not encourage it

"Key concepts include bleed, alibi, RPGs as transformational containers, immersion, identity, transfer, ritual, psychotherapeutic techniques... We emphasize psychological safety before, during, and after games, as well as strategies for cultivating transformational communities." Transformative Role-playing Game Design (2025)

During this period, the concept of Session Zero was also quietly evolving. While the specific term "Session Zero" wouldn't become common until the early 2000s D&D community started using it (referencing the "Step Zero" in the 3.0 Player's Handbook), the practice of collaborative pre-game setup was pioneered by indie designers.

As gaming historian The Alexandrian notes, the concept of group contracts "became heavily popularized in the rec.arts.sf.advocacy Usenet group in the mid-'90s, but those discussions originated from Aaron Allston's Strike Force, which was an incredibly innovative and insightful product from 1988" that was largely forgotten until Forge designers rediscovered and expanded on these ideas.

By 2002, games like Universalis were incorporating Session Zero-type tasks directly into their rules. This culminated in Burning Empires (2006), which dedicated an entire session to collaborative world-building and expectation-setting.

Seven years after Sex and Sorcery, John Stavropoulos faced a different problem entirely. As a convention organizer running games for strangers, he needed something simpler and more immediate than Lines and Veils. The solution came from an unexpectedly mundane moment.

"It was a Wednesday night in Queens, and I went to John Stavropoulos' place for a game."

According to gaming designer James Mendez Hodes, who was present at the table, the first X-Card emerged because "Dave didn't like the vibe" of where a particular scene was heading. Stavropoulos's solution was elegantly simple: draw an X on an index card and put it on the table where anyone could tap it to edit out uncomfortable content.

What made the X-Card revolutionary wasn't just its simplicity. It was its scalability. Stavropoulos "was an event organizer who developed the tool to help ensure a 'positive experience in convention-based play' with strangers" rather than the stable, pre-existing groups that most safety discussions assumed.

This distinction proved crucial when the X-Card faced its first major test in the online indie gaming community. As Penn State professor William J. White documented, many online commentators assumed "play takes place within stable, pre-existing groups" and some felt the X-Card "more or less obviously implies curtailing the range of normal activity at the table."

Game designer Vincent Baker initially criticized the X-Card as "unnecessary or harmful," arguing that "competent game designers" should include safety mechanisms directly in their games rather than relying on external tools. However, Baker later "completely reversed" his position and stated "my take now is that stand-alone safety tools that players can bring with them from game to game are valuable and important."

Unlike Lines and Veils, which required social negotiation skills and cultural context, the X-Card was plug-and-play. As Stavropoulos designed it: "It was originally developed to help make gaming with strangers fun, inclusive, and safe." The tool required no explanation of personal boundaries, no advance negotiation, and no ongoing social navigation. There is a small moment of braveness required to reach out and decide to touch the X.

2015-2020: The Toolkit Explosion

The success of the X-Card opened the floodgates for safety tool innovation. Designers began creating variations and alternatives that addressed specific gaps or preferences:

Three cards labeled "rewind," "pause," and "fast forward" that anyone at the table can tap to activate. "Rewind" takes the game back to before uncomfortable content, "Pause" puts the scene on hold, "Fast Forward" skips past uncomfortable content.

Color-coded cards (green, yellow, red) that allow non-verbal communication about scene intensity and consent.

"Cut" means roleplaying stops immediately and nearby players must stop to check in. "Brake" lets other players know to decrease the intensity of play without stopping entirely.

During this period, safety tools began appearing in academic research on gaming. Sarah Lynne Bowman and her colleagues at the Transformative Play Initiative started formally studying how these tools functioned in therapeutic and educational contexts, lending scholarly credibility to what had emerged from grassroots community innovation.

2019-2020: Mainstream Adoption and the TTRPG Safety Toolkit

The real watershed moment came with the publication of two major resources: Monte Cook Games' Consent in Gaming (2019) and the TTRPG Safety Toolkit (Kienna Shaw and Lauren Bryant-Monk, 2020).

Cook’s free publication brought safety tools into mainstream gaming discussion, featuring the X-Card alongside other community-developed tools.

The safety Toolkit is a comprehensive resource that won the 2020 ENNIE Award for "Best Free Game / Product" and became the definitive compilation of community safety tools.

In 2021, Stavropoulos worked on the writing team for Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, the first official Dungeons & Dragons book to include the X-Card. This marked the full integration of grassroots safety innovations into corporate gaming products.

Looking at this twenty-year timeline reveals several fascinating patterns:

Every major safety tool emerged from designers trying to solve specific, practical problems rather than abstract theoretical concerns. Edwards needed to handle mature themes in horror gaming. Stavropoulos needed tools for convention play with strangers. These safety tools are emerging from the practice of playing, but also in the practice of playing certain games or in certain environments. Their ubiquitous use of these tools outside of those contexts is a testament to their value to the community and the hobby overall.

Tools consistently emerged from indie gaming communities, gained adoption through grassroots advocacy, and eventually found their way into mainstream corporate products, often years or decades later. It is on the backs of the cultural guerrilla fighters that we heap this praise; those dedicated to the authenticity of story and the desire to face novel veins of complex story content.

Each new tool built on previous innovations while addressing specific gaps. The X-Card improved on Lines and Veils' accessibility. Script Change added nuance to the X-Card's binary intervention.

The effectiveness of safety tools depends heavily on the gaming culture they're implemented within. Tools that worked in the collaborative, consent-focused indie gaming community required different framing and introduction when adopted by mainstream gaming.

The Hidden Wisdom: What We Can Learn

This history reveals crucial insights for anyone implementing safety tools today:

Lines and Veils work best with established groups who can negotiate boundaries socially. The X-Card excels with strangers or situations requiring immediate intervention.

The Forge community's success with safety tools came from their overall culture of consent and collaboration, not just the tools themselves.

Safety tools continue evolving because different groups face different challenges. The tools that work for your table might not exist yet. You might be the one to create them.

Coming in this series:

• Part 3: When Safety Tools Failed (And Succeeded) in Actual Play - Real-world case studies from streaming shows and convention disasters

Sources:

• Bowman, Sarah Lynne, et al. Transformative Role-playing Game Design. Uppsala University, 2025.

• Codega, Lin. The X-Card was created because Dave didn’t like the vibe. Rascal News, 2024.

• Edwards, Ron. Sex and Sorcery: The Third Supplement for Sorcerer. Adept Press, 2004.

• Hodes, James Mendez. "The X-Card was created because Dave didn't like the vibe." Rascal News, August 7, 2024.

• Shaw, Kienna and Lauren Bryant-Monk. TTRPG Safety Toolkit, 2020.

• Stavropoulos, John. "X-Card: Safety Tools for Simulations and Role-Playing Games," 2013.

• The Alexandrian. "Evolution of Session Zero." Gaming blog analysis.

• White, William J. Academic analysis of X-Card discourse in The Forge community.

• Various forum archives and community discussions from The Forge, 2004-2013.