Nighthawks:33 is run on DIscord, as a game designed to play online. The game alternates between space combat scenes, and conversations on the battleship.
Nighthawks:33 Safety Briefing based on one given by Charlie Halden at the first run.
Safety
The well-being and comfort of players is always more important than the game. It’s always completely fine to opt out of a conversation or a topic – you can either take your character to a different channel or just say “off-game” and then tell the other player or players what you need. Maybe play is heading towards a subject you’re not comfortable playing on, or maybe a scene is getting too intense.
When someone says “off-game”, stop whatever you’re doing, listen to the player who called it, and adjust play as requested. Respect each others’ needs, don’t question them.
You can also say “off-game” if you want to have a quick chat with someone about wanting to steer play in a certain direction.
If you need to leave the game for any reason, you are of course welcome to go. If it’s possible, a message to one of the GM:s about it is always welcome, but if not don’t worry about it.
If something happens in game that makes you uncomfortable you are also always welcome to contact one of the GM’s.
Discrimination
This game explores social tensions between different groups, using “civilian vs military”, and “colony vs colony” to represent the prejudices that exist. Characters are written to be of any gender, race, and sexuality as the player chooses – they are identified in the brief by surname, call-sign, or nickname.
Discrimination, other than via the in-game metaphors listed above, has no place in the game – avoid gendered, sexuality-based, transphobic, racist, religiously intolerant, and ableist insults in play. There is no sexual abuse or drug abuse written into the game, and players are requested not to add those themes in play. Romantic backstory is not written into the game, but players are free to determine details of how their characters connected, if they are linked in briefs.
Accessibility
This game does take some different approaches to the use of Discord, and we want to share those with potential players in case they present any accessibility issues.
Fighter Combat Segments
The space combat scenes are run for a group of six players, in an audio only channel. The players watch text prompts in a text channel which describe events outside their ships, and they respond by roleplaying the audio dialogue between pilots. The messages in the text channel are visible to all players, but each one is targetted to a specific player as “the first person to notice”, and guidelines are in place to try to reduce players talking over each other.
More info on how these segments work is found here: Fighter Combat Segments.
In previous runs, a small number of players have found reading text and talking like this difficult, and we have been able to make this easier for them by sharing the text in advance with those players. We do also practice this type of scene before the game begins, and are willing to make accomodations if anyone still finds it difficult.
Flight Deck Segments
When characters are on the flight deck, they can talk on audio only “radio channels”, or face to face using video channels that only accept two players.
We have not had any accessibility concerns raised about these segments that are different to any other LARP run on Discord.