Cozy Games vs. Safety Tools

Beware companies turning your favorite tabletop game into a "Cozy Game."

Death mechanics are omitted or designed so no one dies. Wounding is hidden behind abstract layers of detail. Insanity and adverse conditions are downplayed, or you are told they are problematic. You are told, "No one can lose!" Player-versus-player combat is disallowed. And if combat is involved, it is overpowered, easy, and a foregone conclusion you will win.

This is a cozy game.

You see this a lot in board and card games, which are participation games where no one loses, there are multiple winners, and they are designed to be games for preschooler mentalities - but targeted at adults. Many cute and cuddly player options also feed into this feeling that a game is slipping into this area; who could hurt my cute teddy bear character? How could you roll on the dismemberment table for my adorable doll character and make them bleed?

This is where some of the pushback against safety tools comes from, and the two are unrelated.

The cozy game is a marketing tool to push engagement and lifestyle branding; if marketing pushes you to "see yourself in the game," then "you should not be able to die in-game." If D&D is a lifestyle brand, nobody should lose or feel bad about participating. The game should be easy. Everyone should have magic. Nobody gets left out.

5E is trending towards cozy games at an alarming rate.

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

Safety tools? They have legitimate uses, and I see cozy gentrification as the real problem. A hobby shop owner can fill out a sheet of safety tools settings for every group that plays in public just so customers aren't upset by players in-game kicking puppies or graphic dismemberment in an area where people are trying to shop for their kids. Others may have trauma, and if this is the way they want to anonymously communicate to a GM, it is acceptable.

A GM could fill out a safety tool sheet stating "what will be in this game," and the tool could be used in reverse. If you dislike that content, the game isn't good for you. There are always other games and groups to play with; this is just respecting their choices. So, a 'reverse safety tool' is a thing and one I would use if I had a story that went edgy in some places. So, the tool goes both ways.

They are not limiting factors but communication tools - like a form letter or a resume.

If my group had a regular Friday the 13th Horror game running for 5 years, you could use the tool to tell new players, "If you join the game, this may happen."

The game isn't changing because of a new tool. Accept it or opt out. A fair warning is given.

In-game tools, like X cards? Another communication tool, and one I am less hot on since the pre-game agreements should cover most things, but situations come up, and I can see why they may be used. A GM should be able to point at an X card to tell a player to tone it down, and I have had that happen at a game before. A store owner with a game in public? Same thing. Tone it down, table; you are upsetting someone.

But if someone hits that X card too much, that could be a sign that the game isn't for them.

That tool goes both ways, too.

The more these tools go in both directions, the less objectionable they are. If they are used by one side to attack another, impose their will on a majority of others, or are used to disrupt play, then they have serious problems. They have a bad reputation because they have been sold as one-way troublemaking tools, and most discussions center on people using them this way.

Wall Street will eliminate safety tools from the games we play since they imply things should happen in these games that may upset people. Wall Street will white-bread everything it touches and ensure absolute control of content. The trend line is toward cozy games, and the safety tool is just a band-aid meant to distract the community and buy time. Ultimately, the following "viral horror story" about a game going wrong that used safety tools will be used as the reason to write the game for children and write the tools out of the game.

Trust me, it's coming.

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

Cozy games? The game designers force 'safety' on you through game design, often for marketing and engagement purposes. You do not have a choice other than to not buy or play the game. This is worse than a safety tool, which can be used to enable content that may not otherwise be in the game. Some even have the designers lecturing you on how you should play their game.

Many cozy game designers muddle and confuse the two topics, making it seem like safety tools are used to enforce a cozy game's design theories onto every group that plays it. Safety tools are not authoritarian behavior enforcement devices, but this is how many cozy games use them. This is how people misuse them, too.

Communication tools are not meant to enforce behavior.

And the term safety tool is a misleading name since it can make a game less safe. It is like calling a movie rating system (G, PG, R, etc.) a "film safety rating." It puts an implication on the tool that it does not deserve and can be used as a weapon to say, "Unsafe films should never be shown." Some people don't like the term, so they are against the concept. A better name for these are the 'game content rating' and 'game preference tool,' which are more neutral descriptions of the tools that better communicate what these tools are doing.

But the cozy game gives you no choice, and it expects its players to be silent enforcers of the designer's will. In fact, there is no way to escape the designer's intention since it is a baked-in mechanic.

You don't have a say or a choice with a cozy game.

A safety tool - that goes both ways - gives you a choice and respects the group's preferences at the table.