Hey y'all! I've whipped up a pretty chunky RPG Consent Form for use in DND and other ttrpg's because none of the other ones I could find floating around on the internet were comprehensive enough for my tastes. Thought I would share in case anyone else is having the same problem I was :]

Rpg_Consent_Form.pdf

Edit: This link is no longer to a google form but to a pdf. I apologize for not being able to upload a fillable version, but if you need a recommendation for making fillable pdfs I recommend Sejda

That DOES look very comprehensive! Thank you!

The link is legit, then?  Hm.  Was not willing to trust it, there's been a run of suspicious links in obviously fraudulent posts around here recently.  Good to know.

Might need worth having  an extra option - please discuss with me first. There are somethings that I really don't like and wouldn't tolerate at the table at all. There is stuff that I'd just want the table to be aware of. There is also stuff that I'd only be comfortable with it dealt with a certain way. Torture for example- I wouldn't mind it being mentioned in general ("Bob is being tortured"), but I really wouldn't like it if it were described in detail, his reactions etc. That's something I'd want to discuss first since there is nuance.

That's what 'Yellow' is for.  It wasn't explained perfectly, but all these Consent Form lists use Yellow as "I'm not necessarily against this but there's thing I want made clear before it comes up", i.e. "please check with me before doing this".  Yellow is supposed to signal to a DM that something is beyond a player's comfortable bounds and they need to have a sit-down with that player before doing it.

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

The link is legit, then?  Hm.  Was not willing to trust it, there's been a run of suspicious links in obviously fraudulent posts around here recently.  Good to know.

Oof, and here I was just blithely clicking on it. Well yes, it is legit.

I feel like if you don't want to face apocalypse/impending disaster, D&D maybe isn't your game. Isn't that present in some form in pretty much any adventure?

Quote from trigojon >>

I feel like if you don't want to face apocalypse/impending disaster, D&D maybe isn't your game. Isn't that present in some form in pretty much any adventure?

Let's not try and tell people how they're not playing the game right or that it's not for them, shall we? Off the top of my head I would point out that episodic procedural games wouldn't necessarily have any sort of impending disaster. That could take the form of a game centered around a gladiatorial ring and every session is about hyping up the coming bout, culminating in the big fight. Or maybe a game centered around courtly drama and gossip, where the controversy of the week is the main fodder for roleplay and each session is built around the ball or fete hosted at each noble family's house. Or a crime drama, where the players are an investigative unit tracking down criminals ... could be a bit of impending disaster, but could just as easily be just the criminal of the week and no over arching apocalypse at all.

Quote from trigojon >>

I feel like if you don't want to face apocalypse/impending disaster, D&D maybe isn't your game. Isn't that present in some form in pretty much any adventure?

 
D&D can be played with all sorts of stories. You could play it as heroes saving the world from impending doom. You could play it more like tomb raider - going through caves and dungeons and tombs to clear some enemies, solve puzzle and get the loot (i.e. a dungeon crawler). You could play it as political intrigue with sword - Game of Thrones style. You could play Castle/Shopkeeping/Farming simulator. 

D&D is a versatile system and ultimately is just an engine upon which you can build the game you want. This means you get to decide what kind of threats or challenges will be faced. Play your way.

Quote from trigojon >>

I feel like if you don't want to face apocalypse/impending disaster, D&D maybe isn't your game. Isn't that present in some form in pretty much any adventure?

 
Beyond the whole accessibility/inclusiveness aspect...some people dislike "Impending DOOOOOOOM" scenarios because timers/ticking clocks/deadlines stress them all the way out.  Someone who works under such stressors all day isn't necessarily going to appreciate the DM saying "You have seven days to prevent Armageddon".  They don't want that additional time stress in their hobby time hours as well as their work lives.  Even if someone is playing a game about staving off the end of the world, there's ways to frame it where time crunch isn't really a concern.  A more relaxed, adventure-at-your-own-pace game could be exactly what they're hoping for, and Doom Clocks might turn them off a game they'd otherwise really like.

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

Quote from trigojon >>

I feel like if you don't want to face apocalypse/impending disaster, D&D maybe isn't your game. Isn't that present in some form in pretty much any adventure?

 
Beyond the whole accessibility/inclusiveness aspect...some people dislike "Impending DOOOOOOOM" scenarios because timers/ticking clocks/deadlines stress them all the way out.  Someone who works under such stressors all day isn't necessarily going to appreciate the DM saying "You have seven days to prevent Armageddon".  They don't want that additional time stress in their hobby time hours as well as their work lives.  Even if someone is playing a game about staving off the end of the world, there's ways to frame it where time crunch isn't really a concern.  A more relaxed, adventure-at-your-own-pace game could be exactly what they're hoping for, and Doom Clocks might turn them off a game they'd otherwise really like.

 That makes sense. The idea of making the whole adventure so time dependent never even crossed my mind. I just kinda thought "Isn't a game about fighting dragons kinda always impending doom?"

My pedant nature has to say.

1-think you could use some descriptors in things. Like "body horror minor to moderate/moderate to severe" categories.

One persons moderate may be severe to another person.  Like I  think everyone can agree "The Thing" is severe, but "Moderate" could be very wide indeed.

2- Depending on how one feels about religion in general, "cult like" could encompass all religion. (Even as an atheist I think that's silly, but I acknowledge it's a thing some think)

3- While it may be included within "Specific Cultural Issues". I think you could include, "Stories or scenarios based upon real life events" to the Social/Political thing.
I remember/hearing a RPG Horror story of a DM who ran a scenario based on Jan 6th, where DM obviously had a different take than the player that wrote the post.

Those relatively minor nitpicks/suggestions aside, a fantastic job.
While my claustrophobia isn't so severe that including enclosed spaces in games bothers me, it is refreshing seeing it actually asked about on a thing like this.

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

The link is legit, then?  Hm.  Was not willing to trust it, there's been a run of suspicious links in obviously fraudulent posts around here recently.  Good to know.

Uh, I may be overly paranoid or maybe prior occupation derived sensitivity to information collection, but this form gives me pause.  User fills out form which goes back to the player in an email, where else does this personal (social-emotional candor as opposed to PII) go or get compiled and associated with that user email address?  I mean, it's entirely possible this first post thread is well intended, but on the initial consents check boxes, I would have appreciated some notice regarding to whom this data may be transmitted or aggregated outside of the stated "goes to you" claim, and what use if any such compilation may serve.  I personally would not want an email, even a gamertag email with my stated sensitivities cached wherever the designer intentionally designated or neglectfully defaulted.

There's a reason these forms are usually circulated within a table as fillable PDFs and not a inherently machine readable and learnable process that are designed for multiple recipients.  All the google forms I routinely fill out that get sent to me are also sent to a myriad of other addresses within the system I'm engaging, as the designer is - maybe unintentionally - obfuscating that fact in the text of the form, I would not call this document safe by any means and request moderation to disable the link until it can be better vetted.

As for the form itself, I'm not really blown away by it.  I think there are many PDF out there that do an ample job and I question the utility of a comprehensive form to be used in any game.  My consent forms are tailored to those themes I know my game will contend with.  I think rather than a GoogleForm for the vulnerabilities I've identified, some way that enables a GM/dm to manage this comprehensive list to be tailored to their game.  Nowhere on the form is a user explicitly given the option to opt out of content that may give some players a feeling that the process is actually pretty invasive (the GM/DM does not in fact need to know about every aspect of a players psyche or lived experience). 

Consent is an act of trust and vulnerability and I just feel this form errs into easily abused and exploited terrain in its format and content.  Much of the stuff of the form is not need to know for many many games, and in its effort to be totalizing will give players of those many many games the wrong idea of the amount of social emotional investment and risk taking the game actually requires.

The existing consent forms out there are good, and hard to do better.  

Quote from Yurei1453 >>

The link is legit, then?  Hm.  Was not willing to trust it, there's been a run of suspicious links in obviously fraudulent posts around here recently.  Good to know.

 I'm happily ignorant of those particular posts, I will take your word on that aspect and thank you for posting this. Hopefully DDB mods will spot and delete those posts and move to Ban said posters from this forum

The link is legitimate and serves as a template for any others who would wish to vet players and/or learn their interests/preferences before launching a campaign with such content themes.  This would not be a form that anyone here would need to submit, but an idea on what one could build themselves for their own games.

Quote from Sedge >>

The link is legitimate and serves as a template for any others who would wish to vet players and/or learn their interests/preferences before launching a campaign with such content themes.  This would not be a form that anyone here would need to submit, but an idea on what one could build themselves for their own games.

Sedge, if rather than proactively take steps to secure the DDB community, you, speaking in some capacity for D&D Beyond, want to simply declare that D&D Beyond has no responsibility as to what may happen to information provided by users using the Google Form, that's fine, and frankly expected.  But you're misrepresenting, I'm assuming unintentionally, the personal security vulnerabilities of the document via its nature as a Google Form, and an anonymously produced Google Form for that matter. 

Now while I admit I'm not even possessed of a degreed white belt in Google Fu this document wasn't provided as a template, something to be copied and adapted, but to used.  For the non sophisticated user there's no evident fast share copy feature enabled on the form to take it out of the users control and set it up for personal use, and the content would be exhaustive to be reproduced manually (sort of the point of an "exhaustive resource" it does the work for you).  So functionally, per the instructions on the actual form, a user is to use that instance of the form, which is then e-mailed back to the user which the user can then "share with their GM" per the instructions.

Again, it's likely this was well intended, but anyone familiar with Google Forms knows that Google Forms usually are sent in many other directions besides the form user (for example, if I fill out an absence or early dismissal form for a school, that form goes to every teacher, and administrators involved in attendance records ... though it's not stated on the form).  I don't know who darbydarbs1 is outside a purported user on D&D Beyond since 9/23/20 with this resource being their only post of record.  Do I trust that user to secure their Google Account and thus administrative access to the form on which I'm to enter my predilections for violence, sex and morbiditiy among other "sensitive" subjects on a form linked to an email address associated with my otherwise private person?  

The intent is understandable, though the actual utility of exhaustive cataloging questionable, and the overall security is concerning.  But Google Forms is too open a system with no accountability for these purposes.  This is better left to the more closed loop PDFs in existence or provided as a truly shareable resource that can be actually adapted and adopted and hosted elsewhere than darbydarbs1's google. 

I believe Sedge's intent was more "here's a link with a long list of things it might be useful to ask your players about".  Yeah, it's not ideal from an information security and privacy standpoint.  The warning's been delivered though, and as best I can tell the OP's heart was in the right place.  Sometimes a 'Comprehensive' form is useful even if only to jog a player's memory of things they might not remember to speak of when asked an open-ended "what doesn't work for you?" question.  "What shouldn't I do?" is a very broad, difficult to answer question; a long, itemized list like this or the more basic Consent Form helps people focus.  Helps players know what to flag, helps DMs who might not even realize some things might need flagging.  Heck, we saw that in this thread - Trigojon didn't know Doom Clocks were something that people might flag.  Now he does, and he's better equipped to DM for it.  That sort of thing is useful.

I definitely get the information control concerns on this form and I won't be using it myself.  But I think the warnings you've already delivered should suffice, hopefully?

Yeah, maybe, but the overall list (that frankly copies the format of at least one of the best PDF forms) needn't be in a GoogleForm format.  Outside of the GoogleForm usage itself, I'd still say it's a bit invasive an overshare of an exercise even as the way you outline it, Yurei, sort of "look it over and address matters that concern you the player".  If I dropped the form on one of my groups, I'm pretty sure half my players would get pulled by their parents, and some of the adult players may bail even though very little of the considerations applied to them.  I think a list for DM consideration to include on their specific table game may be appropriate, but exhaustive often also means excessive and moreover tedious.

Again, even the most simulationist of this games will rarely require all this form's consideration.  I believe the well circulated systems and guidelines already in existence actually do provide guidance on incorporating content not considered on their own forms (it's also why just have red and yellow and X cards at table is probably better for a free wheeling game than this comprehensive inventory). 

Respect also creates boundaries, and this form in its totalizing interrogation, however well intended, is nevertheless needlessly transgressive.  As a counterpoint to the present TTRPG systems, folks who have been around have seen similar arguably well intended systems in play in LARPs, and folks who've been really around have seen such completionist getting to know you systems exploited.  It gets into the problem of folks trying to engage a character on a "method" acting level without doing the extensive psychological conditioning work to perform so safely with DM/GMs who rarely have the experience to manage those dynamics safely.  So in the end, I can see such a completionist form backfiring by granting poorly understood license.   

I wouldn't even click on it, I don't care what it is.  

Submitting that document accidentally gives the person all this information about someone, and that kind of data can be misused to the nth degree.  Intent might be fine, but no one should be comfortable submitting anything close to that amount of data and the fact this thread is still open by itself is concerning to me.  Moreso that the moderation team has reviewed it and given an official stance that it's ok for this to be linked here.  

I think a thread/forum discussion about consent and what questions you ask would be a lovely topic, but I would tell anyone that clicking on that and giving away your data is not a good idea.  More so to a single post account.  A single post account with a google doc form reeks of malicious intent.