A Note About Safety

Mnemonic is a game and setting designed with the intent of being careful in the stories we tell. My hope is that it is safe to play, assuming that your group is safe to play with.

That said, no game is perfect. What follows are some notes about how I think about safety.

Safety means that everyone at the table is empowered to collaborate. If the story ignores a player’s boundaries, the story becomes unsafe for that player.

Safety means that when you take risks, everyone at the table knows what those risks are and has consented to them. If things cross a boundary for you, safety at the table means you’re comfortable saying so.

Safety means taking breaks to give people a chance to breathe and stretch and grab a snack if they need to, and checking in with each other frequently to make sure everyone is on board with where the story is going.

The rules provide some time during the process of making your character for thinking about and defining some boundaries. Beyond that, I won’t tell you how to create safety at your table; every player’s needs are different, and what works for some groups won’t work for others. What I will say is that you should consider how to make your play group a safe environment for everyone, so that no one is left feeling like their needs won’t be respected.

Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.

Avoiding Bleed

In Mnemonic, you don’t play a hero; instead, you play the part of a storyteller, sitting around a table, telling the story of your chosen hero. The things that happen in the story are not happening to you; they are happening to someone you’ve imagined into being. You might have strong feelings about your character, but they are not you, and you are not them.

For some people (myself included) that layer of separation is important for mitigating bleed, which is when a player begins to experience the emotions of their character. Sometimes bleed is an enjoyable experience, especially if you have the training and tools to safely decompress afterward.

Not everyone has that training, and the tools that work for some won’t work for everybody. As a matter of safety, I think it’s important to give players explicit permission to step out of the story when they need to—and if a player needs to enforce a boundary, it’s important that the other players be able to respect that boundary without being forced suddenly out of their character’s harder emotions.

Example: While playing, my character, Loch, enters into a challenging conversation with her mother about changing her name. This is a scene I know plays close to my own heart, so I make a decision in the moment: Am I going to play this scene out verbally, or just say that it happens for the sake of the story and move on? The emotions might be important to the story I want to tell with this character, but today might not be a good day for that. So I choose:

• Play it Out: Loch stands her ground; enough is enough. “Mom, I’ve told you a hundred times—my name is Loch, not Mouse. I don’t know how else to get you to understand!”
• Describe it: Loch stands her ground, and it turns into a big argument over whether she’s allowed to change her name, what it means to leave her old name behind, what that means for her family… it’s messy, and it goes on way too long.
• Skip it: Loch stands her ground and demands that her mother use her new name. We don’t need to go into detail.

If I decide to play it out, I’m also going to ask somebody else to join me in the scene as Loch’s mother, which means I need to also check with the group if they’re up for the emotions involved here. I also need to be ready for people to say no.

Does this mean you can’t roleplay scenes in-character? Maybe. I think I would more encourage you to remain aware of yourself as a separate entity from your character, even if you do briefly speak on their behalf.

Just… just be careful, okay?