I feel like getting differing emotional responses is pretty normal in most of my games.

I play with a pretty large group, with a relatively homogeneous presentation (mostly male, mostly white, mostly straight, mostly middle-class, mostly educated). In virtually any game we play we get a remarkably diverse level of emotional response. And, yeah, it can lead to a lot of disruption. It’s one of the reasons I probably would never play Montsegur with my home group. There are a couple of those guys whose reactions would be so difficult to reconcile with my own that it would take me out of my preferred emotional zone and sour the whole thing.

That said, I trust them enough to say that if I presented the game and said “this deals with some pretty heavy emotional stuff, and won’t really work if you aren’t either open to an emotional response or willing to just let other people have their own emotions, and if that’s not going to work, then maybe don’t play,” the people who would be most likely to disrupt me would opt-out.

My one session (which Kimberley Lam was also in) had a pretty wide range of responses, both in terms of actual emotion and depth of experience. Kim’s response was very much visible/external. Other players seemed really internal, but nonetheless affected. I moved a little to “director” stance, but mostly just to set up conflicts for myself so I could externalize my emotions, and because I find that I can appreciate the responses and performances of other players better from that stance.