Sandbox of Consent



Quirky as it might seem, the best way to start building your Storygame setting is for everyone to agree on what they most definitely DON'T want to have included. This is something everyone in the starting troupe should have input on before the world builders go to work. Your Social Contract will cover how players should treat each other as people, the OOC words and behavior. That comes after world building is done in Game Zero. The Sandbox of Consent is simply about what is and isn't okay to type into the shared setting and collaborative narrative. Below are a list of topics that every troupe should probably cover and establish the baseline comfort zone. Individual troupes will surely have their own topics to toss in.

By presenting these topics, we are neither advocating or discouraging their inclusion. Whatever is best for your group is best for your group. Just don't go with majority sentiment when it comes to what kind of content you decide to include. If even one member of your starting troupe would feel grossly uncomfortable with a certain kind of content, they aren't consenting to it being in the sandbox. Leave it out.

Erotic Roleplay
Erotic roleplay, also called smut, involves narratively describing sex acts during a Storygame scene. There are a lot of active websites dedicated to erotic roleplay. We strongly suggest that troupes use discretion and common sense if they are going to allow it. Consider who will have access to the Chronicle Archive. The fade to black mechanism exists to let players end a scene at a point its obvious the characters are going to "go there" and leaving the rest to everyone's imagination.

The Gory Details
This should cover not simply explicit depictions of murder scenes but also torture, defecation, vomit, the ravages of disease/starvation, anything that would make most people sick to their stomach if they visually witnessed it. The key word is explicit. How much gore does the troup want to be woven into the setting's atmosphere? How vague should players generally be when they are writing about rot, poop, blood splatter?

Slavery & Bondage
Should your setting have slavery as part of its society? Where is the troupe's comfort zone on the idea that characters can be owned by other characters? Its possible to write about sado-masochism, bondage, and other facets of dominant/submissive relationships without it including erotic roleplay but does anyone in the troupe have a strong aversion and want it out of the setting any way?

Inclusion of Social Discrimination/Bigotry
We strongly advocate that all troupes have No Hate Speech as part of their chronicle's social contract. Players should show each other better respect than that. This is merely establishing what forms of racism or bigotry exist in the setting itself, how characters are going to interact with other characters. Racism, sexism, homophobia, discrimination against the disabled or the elderly, there are a lot of ways a chronicle setting could have a lot of "ism" to it and a lot of ways to turn the ones we've got in our real world into something very different in a Storygame. Decide together how much fictional social injustice is comfortable for everyone to participate in.

Obvious Satire
By satire, we mean including something (or basing a character off someone) for the sole purpose of mocking it and or them. This can include presenting a specific person, religion, political ideology, or cultural icon in a clearly derogatory or comically exaggerated way. Satire can be incredibly funny to one person and outright annoying or offensive to another. Check with everyone before working satirical content into the world building.

Requested Features
Beyond making sure the starting troupe is comfortable with the type of content that is going to be presented, get a list of story elements everyone agrees they want to see, especially types of characters they want to potentially play. If you are making a high fantasy realm and someone in the troop mentions they would like to play a shape-shifting unicorn if possible and that isn't game-breaking for anyone else? Invite them into the world building team and have them work that into the macrocosm.