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Code of Conduct

Edinburgh Indie Gamers (the Club) strives to be a safe, inclusive, and diverse gaming community. Everyone participating in the Club — including, but not limited to, our Discord server, social media, and in-person gaming events — is required to abide by this Code of Conduct.

The Club is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurotype, physical appearance, body, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, language, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.

Participating in the Club constitutes acknowledgement and acceptance to abide by this Code of Conduct in both digital and physical spaces.

Anyone who violates this Code of Conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from the Club’s spaces.

Principles

In accordance with our Code of Conduct, all members of our community shall act in accordance with the following principles:

Safety

All games run within our community must use, explain, and support safety tools. This isn’t to eliminate challenging content, but to make sure that everyone knows the bounds and has given consent.

Consideration

That safety doesn’t end at the gaming table, or with formal safety tools. We ask when in our spaces you consider your words and their impact. It is vital that members can offer opinions and discuss issues, but that should be done in a spirit of support, kindness, and inclusivity. Think about your intent and act in those spaces with integrity and love. Be positive and supportive of others as you would hope they would be of you.

Inclusivity

Community members must be supportive and kind. They should think about the impact of their words, the privilege they hold, and the relative position of those they interact with. As a community we prioritise marginalised people’s safety above privileged people’s comfort and will make all reasonable efforts to be inclusive.

Expected Behaviour

In order to exemplify these principles, participants in the Club are expected to follow these guidelines given below.

We ask that all members:

  • Respect player pronouns and character pronouns, and routinely reaffirm these throughout play and at the start of each session;
  • Practice regular check-ins for enthusiastic consent of game content and interpersonal interaction;
  • Respect player autonomy and practice regular check-ins to affirm enthusiastic agreement of game development;
  • Clearly declare the concept, aim, tone, & subject matter (including clear content warnings) of every game played through the Club; and
  • Explain and incorporate some form of tools for safe play (e.g. X-Card, Lines & Veils, etc) into every game shared at the Club.

Participants at the Club all have a shared responsibility to ensure a positive and welcoming play culture. To these ends, participants are also encouraged to read our Good Gameplay Guide.

Safety Tools

Otherwise known as communication tools or tools of the table, these include a variety of practices to facilitate clear communication at the table in order to promote safe and welcoming play. For more information on safety tools, refer to our Resources section.

Unacceptable Behaviour

Our community takes a wide view on what we consider harassment. This includes any behaviour that degrades or disparages another individual or group, or creates an unwelcoming or distressing atmosphere. Such behaviour is not welcome in our spaces and will not be tolerated.

Some examples of unacceptable behaviour

  • Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurotype, physical appearance, body, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, language, or religion;
  • Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment;
  • Deliberate use of incorrect names or pronouns, including misgendering, use of ‘dead’ or rejected names, or other inappropriate forms of address;
  • Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behaviour in spaces where they’re not appropriate;
  • Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop;
  • Making intentionally false communications, either written, spoken, or posted on any social media, that harms a member;
  • Stealing or misappropriation of any property (including digital) belonging to another member or the community, including all materials developed for or on behalf of the community without the express permission of the member;
  • Acting in a manner that endangers the health or safety of another person;
  • Threats of violence;
  • Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm;
  • Deliberate intimidation;
  • Stalking or following, including both physical and digital spaces;
  • Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes;
  • Sustained disruption of discussion;
  • Unwelcome sexual attention;
  • Patterns of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others;
  • Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease; and
  • Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent, except as necessary to protect other community members or other vulnerable people from intentional abuse.

As a community, we prioritise marginalised people’s safety above privileged people’s comfort. To that effect, The community reserves the right to not act on retaliatory complaints or other attempts to weaponize this Code of Conduct or other community processes. Such bad faith actions include, but are not limited to:

As a community, we prioritise marginalised people’s safety above privileged people’s comfort. To that effect, the community reserves the right to not act on retaliatory complaints or other attempts to weaponize this Code of Conduct or other community processes.

Some examples of bad faith retaliations

  • Complaints of ‘reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’;
  • Complaints against the reasonable communication of boundaries, such as ‘leave me alone,’ ‘go away,’ or ‘I’m not discussing this with you;’
  • Complaints of someone communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial; and
  • Complaints against criticisms of racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behaviour or assumptions.

Raising Concerns

If you experience disrespectful or harassing behaviour by a member of the community, notice that someone else is being disrespected or harassed, or have any other concerns, please immediately contact one of the Admin Team. You can find more information on how to contact the Admin Team by following the link below:

Contact the Admin Team

Enforcement and Consequences

Participants whose behaviour breaches these Codes will be asked to apologise and rectify their behaviour. They are expected to comply immediately.

Any and all complaints received by the Admin Team are investigated, and steps are taken to minimise harm to participants. If requested, we will endeavour to protect the confidentiality of a complainant to the fullest extent possible.

If the person you are raising concerns about is a member of the Admin Team, either officially or in an ancillary capacity, they will not be involved in handling the incident.

You should be assured that there will be no retaliation against you for making good faith claims.

Thanks and Attribution

This policy was based on the existing XOXO Community Code of Conduct, the Gauntlet code of Conduct which is itself based on resources provided by Geek Feminism, and borrows heavily from similar open source policies authored by JSConf AU and Django.

This policy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. We encourage other events to adopt (and enforce) similar policies by using and remixing ours.