The Gaming Table Social Contract

When people sit down at the gaming table, there’s often an unspoken social contract the players agree to. At least that’s the hope. See, the game falls apart if players refuse to get along. This isn’t exclusive to the gaming table, though. There’s a reason Scripture gives us guidelines on how to love our neighbors. And why we’re commanded to do so.

Loving our neighbors starts in the 10 Commandments, which can be found in Exodus 20:1-171. Note that verses 12-17 specifically summarize how to love others while verses 1-11 tell us how to love God. Keep in mind that loving God is the greatest commandment, and loving others is the second greatest commandment (Matthew 22:34-401). According to Scripture, loving our neighbor as ourselves includes honoring our parents, abstaining from murder, adultery, stealing, dishonesty, and covetousness. I could probably write an entire article on each commandment and how they impact us as individuals and culture as a whole, but we’re focusing on the social contract of a gaming table today.

Our social contract should be founded on Exodus 20:12-17, at least regarding how players interact with each other and how player characters (PCs) interact with other PCs. Many tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) groups move through their campaign as a roving party of “murder hobos,” laying waste to anyone who stands in the way of their own goals, regardless of the PCs’ moral alignments. They steal what they covet, lie to achieve their ends if honesty or violence aren’t options, and a cliched trope at this point is the philandering bard who attempts to seduce everything that moves, often just because they can (note these characters are particularly, prejudicially banned at my tables, but in general players at my tables who violate any of the 10 Commandments face the consequences of their actions, just as they might in the real world).

When the players work together to achieve their goals, even when committing to actions that would violate the 10 Commandments in the real world, they often enjoy the game because the party is united. It’s one way to fulfill the social contract, though it could end up causing major issues with the game master (GM), who is trying to craft a story with options the players can choose to advance the plot. If PCs kill every non-player character (NPC) the GM presents, the story falls apart. The general structure of the game becomes unstable. Highly skilled GMs are deft at adapting to almost any choice the players make, but at some point, continually causing problems with NPCs and the gaming world turns the players into the GM’s adversaries, whether intentionally or not is irrelevant. Likewise, when GMs go out of their way to antagonize players, the adversarial atmosphere at the table can encourage chaos, breaking the story, and turning a shared storytelling opportunity into interpersonal conflict. Maybe that’s what some people want from a TTRPG campaign, but there’s still a social contract involved in those occasions.

At times, some players like to disrupt the table and make decisions that hurt the other PCs, and sometimes the other players, and then justify it by saying, “Well that’s just what my character would do.” This will include PCs stealing from everyone (other PCs and as many NPCs as possible), being rude everyone, and going out of their way to start fights even with potential allies. If this sounds like a terrible way to play a game, I can assure you that I and thousands of gamers around the world agree with you. Those particular players, in my experience, also get upset when someone other than themselves plays the game the same way. From their perspective, a PC “just doing what the character would do” is only okay if they’re the player acting that way at the table.

To prevent this from happening, the table’s social contract should start with Romans 12:18, which reads, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all1.” At the very least, this means that every player at the table will ideally remember not to disrupt the game for the other players, including the GM. If a PC’s background and motivations might lead them to behave in a way that can disrupt the story, players need to navigate that in a way that allows the party to realign their goals at some point.

Player conflict (contrasted with character conflict) is enough of an issue that many TTRPG books have at least a full paragraph devoted to peaceable resolutions. I believe that those passages in the game books would be entirely unnecessary if players lived like the 10 Commandments mattered, even in a game setting, or at least followed the advice Paul gave in Romans 12:18.

What the social contract looks like may vary from table to table, depending on the type of story the players and GM want to tell, but the most important thing everyone can do is spend time (usually in Session 0 when planning the campaign and building characters) stating clearly what the expectations are for the game. If conflict arises at the table, set aside time after the game session, or before the next session begins, to hash out why each player is upset or frustrated, making sure that every person has a chance to communicate their concerns and issues. If it’s bad enough to stop the game, don’t be afraid to interrupt the action, but GMs should do their best to divert the players’ attention back to the story and let everyone know that there will be time to discuss the conflict later if it’s an issue that can be set aside for an hour or two.

Worst case scenario, the group could disband, or a problem player may get kicked out, but if we follow the social contract together, the community will grow, and lifelong friendships may be forged!

Sources and Notes

1 At Disciple Gaming Ministry, we encourage people to read the Bible using an accurate translation that is also easy to understand. With that being said, the translation we use is the ESV® Bible. The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.