And exactly how do you know that none of your players need safety tools? Nobody is asking you to carry a spare tire while hiking, but you do admit that bringing one extra bottle of water is a good idea while hiking, right?

Which rulebook is that?

That's because the first group does their mimic checks

In Character: I mean, isn't your armour basically PPE against injury induced by foreign actors?

FATAL, now roll an anal circumference saving throw.

Because of a simple yet very effective technique I call: "Asking them". I suggest safety tools for each new group I DM and to this date, all but one group have been open to the idea but after a quick discussion every single player told me that they see absolutely no use in having them and that they will let me know if they ever feel like the topics are getting too rough for them. BTW, the one group that still has them active pretty much forgot about their existence. I'm a player there and as far as I can tell, the GM is the only one who really wants them. It all comes down to group composition. If you're comfortable around the other players and the GM and know that you can just say "stop" whenever, then safety tools add nothing to your experience.

I'm the opposite, I want romance, character death, low magic, a later era (1700s theming more than 800s), safety tools out the wazoo and in-game bigotry that my party can rebel against.

genuinely, how are these not mutually exclusive, then?

These examples seem mutually exclusive, but I'm not sure why you're asking that. I'm saying the RPG landscape is much more varied than two opposing edge cases - which is how memes tend to misrepresent the world.

It's way to avoid a lot of *rpg horro stories* the classical one include - Clear description of the game (which is done in this comic) properly managing expectations is already great - Line and veil, in the sense writing done theme that you don't want at the table, and themes which can be present but *not in plain sight* for example most people do close the door when having sex, so let's do the same in tabletop no need to go further than the *bard joined the elf in their room, and what happened behind closed door stay behind closed door* - X card, which is a kind of last ressort measure and allows anyone to stop a scene going to far Then, some people push further and added way to modulate the intensity of a scene, like asking for more or less depending on how you feel. Being *at the verge of tears* after a consented intense scene can be one of your best RPG memory ever but *being at the verge of tear* after feeling like another player assaulted you, can be a horror story, and the difference is just about *Accepting it*

it felt more like two examples posited, to me.

the first group is actively avoiding death, because it's realistic to not want to die the second group has characters jump into sarlacc pits because hoo hoo hee hee funny

my take is that the rules are there to facilitate stories and gameplay, because most people are absolutely horrible at making it fun on their own. it's just like playing minecraft, most people want survival mode so there's some mechanical impetus to do things, you don't generally end up with memorable moments on a creative server (you do end up with lots of neat art, however).

Jeff, Geoff, and Jeffrey

Does that mean fudging rolls is basically the RPG equivalent of "mining off camera"?