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Telok
2021-10-03, 02:45 PM
A thing on this forum is the... fesishization isn't right, but its close... the extremely strong advocacy for a "session zero" to create characters, discuss house rules, and otherwise hash out things about the game and system before starting to play.

However, in actual play I've never seen this happen. The closest I've experienced is Champions games where the GM is explicitly, written in the rule book, supposed to set power levels, vet the characters, and collaborate with the players before the game starts. Outside of that one system I've experienced... call it a sort of passive aggressive hostility towards a "session zero". With a combination of players insinuating that any GM intervention during character creation is some sort of bad "character railroading", and an idea that "session zero" isn't playing the game and therefore wastes a game session.

Interestingly, a GM saying something like "PH +1" which D&D AL uses isn't regarded as interference. On the other hand, this "anti-session zero" is so ingraned in my local gaming culture that most GMs (and all D&D DMs) will not interact with any PC backgrounds provided by the player. On the gripping hand my local gaming culture is definitely into the more crunchy and complex rule sets, seeing many more players coming in from technical backgrounds and things like the Warhammer armies games as opposed to more literary backgrounds and rules light games. That produces a more "rules bound" culture that prefers explicit rules permission for things over more free form "it doesn't say not to" styles.

So I'm asking the playground: In your real life, in person, TTRPGs, do you really have a session zero where the players all come in without completed character sheets, talk to each other about making their characters fit the game & party, the GM lays out the tone & house rules, backstories are swapped & adjusted, and that's pretty much the whole 3-5 hour session?

Faily
2021-10-03, 03:04 PM
Kind of, yes?

Plenty of times Session 0 for me have just been that we're talking about what we want to play next, we figure that out, and start to make characters. That's with the groups that I play with the most and we have a good rapport with eachother, so there's no need to go over what to expect, what the houserules will be, etc.

If we're starting a completely new system for most of the folks (like when I introduced a group to FFG's Star Wars), then we dedicate Session 0 to build characters together and cover the basics of the system so that we've gotten our feet wet with the new mechanics.

Some games have required a bit more of a Session 0, such as an Ars Magica campaign where we built our covenant ahead of starting the game, so that required a bit more sharing about our characters and spending time building their home and the people there. So as it was kind of a collective world-building thing, it required its own session.

Most of the people I play with I have contact with through Messenger or Discord, and we set up group-chats there, and a lot of the convo there covers what could've been a Session 0 for some.


But honestly, we don't really have Session 0 to make sure that "everyone is on the same page" and stuff like that, because the people I play with are people I have played games with for years now and we all know eachother fairly well.

Batcathat
2021-10-03, 03:06 PM
For me it's been rather varied over my roleplaying "career". When I was first starting out at the dawn of time, neither me nor any of my friends had any experience with TTRPGs and I don't even think we had seen much of them in popular culture (I remember reading one book where they played some sort of RPG but looking back at it, it was very weird). So the idea of any sort of formalized session zero didn't occur to us. We did usually create our characters together, so I suppose we had shades of it (not that it stopped some pretty odd character combinations in the party).

Later in life, some of the games I've been in have had session zeroes and some have not, it seems to depend mostly on the GM. I don't think I've had one myself when GMing but I might use one when I get around to GMing again (that said, I don't have a problem making suggestions about characters, backstories, etc. It just usually haven't taken the form of a session zero).

Though whether the group uses them or not, I don't think I've ever encountered the sentiments you describe.

icefractal
2021-10-03, 03:12 PM
We have those things happen, but not in a separate session. This is a group that generally meets weekly, so it's more like:

Week 1, after or before the game: "Hey, I'm thinking about running a game where you build up a city in a post-apocalyptic world ... [insert details]. The system would be ___. Who'd be interested in that?"
Week 2: "So here's more details on the setting and mechanics. Anyone got a character concept?" (some people do, some don't yet).
At this point people discuss character concepts, campaign style, tone, and other "Session 0" parameters over the course of several weeks, either by text message or in person before/after the current game.
Week N: "We're going to start the post-apocalypse game next week. Everyone ready?" At this point everyone should have a character concept, any final discussion about how they fit together can occur, and the next week will be Session 1.

So there effectively is a Session 0, but it's stretched out over a period of time and never occupies an entire session. Personally, I like this style - you're not forced to come up with a character on the spot, much less built it at the table (I hate building characters at the table unless the system is simple), and the GM has plenty of time to adjust campaign details based on the feedback.

If this was a new group being assembled only for this particular game, then I'd be in favor of either a Session 0 or a period of text message discussion that covers the same information. Still would rather create characters with no time pressure rather than at the table.

ngilop
2021-10-03, 03:26 PM
We have those things happen, but not in a separate session. This is a group that generally meets weekly, so it's more like:

Week 1, after or before the game: "Hey, I'm thinking about running a game where you build up a city in a post-apocalyptic world ... [insert details]. The system would be ___. Who'd be interested in that?"
Week 2: "So here's more details on the setting and mechanics. Anyone got a character concept?" (some people do, some don't yet).
At this point people discuss character concepts, campaign style, tone, and other "Session 0" parameters over the course of several weeks, either by text message or in person before/after the current game.
Week N: "We're going to start the post-apocalypse game next week. Everyone ready?" At this point everyone should have a character concept, any final discussion about how they fit together can occur, and the next week will be Session 1.

So there effectively is a Session 0, but it's stretched out over a period of time and never occupies an entire session. Personally, I like this style - you're not forced to come up with a character on the spot, much less built it at the table (I hate building characters at the table unless the system is simple), and the GM has plenty of time to adjust campaign details based on the feedback.

If this was a new group being assembled only for this particular game, then I'd be in favor of either a Session 0 or a period of text message discussion that covers the same information. Still would rather create characters with no time pressure rather than at the table.

Yeah... pretty much this. I have very rarely had an actual sit down and discuss session 0. It normally towards the end of the current campaign and we start to talk about what we want to do next as a group.

Its more of an organic growth than an actual established thing. The few times i have done a formal session zero is one time in college and we were, for the most part, ignorant of each other. and so a discussion of what you enjoy, your expectations, and what your playstyle is was warranted. Then when I moved to a new town and had a brand new group and again it was the base issue of none of us knew each other and that as an actual discussion was needed.

False God
2021-10-03, 03:29 PM
So I'm asking the playground: In your real life, in person, TTRPGs, do you really have a session zero where the players all come in without completed character sheets, talk to each other about making their characters fit the game & party, the GM lays out the tone & house rules, backstories are swapped & adjusted, and that's pretty much the whole 3-5 hour session?

It's typically a shorter session, but yes. It often takes place at the end of a previous session or between games, sometimes when we all just happen to be in the same place at the same time and someone has an idea for a new game.

Zevox
2021-10-03, 03:31 PM
So I'm asking the playground: In your real life, in person, TTRPGs, do you really have a session zero where the players all come in without completed character sheets, talk to each other about making their characters fit the game & party, the GM lays out the tone & house rules, backstories are swapped & adjusted, and that's pretty much the whole 3-5 hour session?
My group has not done a "session zero" in exactly that fashion before (though I believe we will for our next campaign), but we've also never had players make characters without the involvement of the DM, either. I can't imagine not doing that - you need to ensure the DM approves of the character, after all; and moreover how are they going to include anything from your character's backstory in a campaign if they're not aware of what it is? And without that, well, the game would be a lot less fun, at least to me.

Our DM has also sent us an e-mailed document outlining house rules and simple expectations before, so that part of a "session zero" has been handled that way instead for us.

Chaos Jackal
2021-10-03, 03:45 PM
Generally, character creation happens more or less independently in all groups I've played in (that is, each player's character is usually revealed in session 1, though they might've discussed a few things with the DM and we typically share the class we intend to play in order to avoid duplicates and/or make a more balanced party) but otherwise yes, we do usually have a session 0. It's usually a short meeting, 30-60 minutes, to give a brief overview of the game, what's to be expected from it (starting and finishing levels, duration, quirks etc.) welcome new additions to the group if any, lay down potential houserules and answer questions pertaining to character creation.

Nothing big or fancy, just some groundwork so that we know where we're standing. But we do it most of the time, even if the group has played together before. We discuss things in Discord servers and Messenger chats too, of course, but a face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) will happen too.

Psyren
2021-10-03, 05:09 PM
So I'm asking the playground: In your real life, in person, TTRPGs, do you really have a session zero where the players all come in without completed character sheets, talk to each other about making their characters fit the game & party, the GM lays out the tone & house rules, backstories are swapped & adjusted, and that's pretty much the whole 3-5 hour session?

It doesn't have to be a physical / in-person meeting. Nearly all of my campaigns have had a session zero, but the majority have been coordinated online via discord or facebook or similar. We're all there to help each other though, especially the veterans and GM helping new and inexperienced players, and the GM is generally making a lore channel crammed with background/setting stuff too.

Mastikator
2021-10-03, 05:31 PM
When I GM? YES. I insist! I begin by explaining what the game is about and give a short summary of the campaign setting. Then I have a list of rules for the players, these rules are up to them but they must agree before it starts. It's things like is PVP allowed, how is loot distributed, etc. I do also have rules for what kinds of characters they are allowed to make, (mostly no joke characters, everyone must make characters that are willing to be team players). THEN we make characters, since all the PCs should know each other when the game starts all the players know what the other players are making. This process takes 1-2 hours, after that I can soft start the game.
I think it's important to stipulate that the players are responsible for keeping the group together and everyone having fun. In my experience this makes the team work much more robust and the players are much happier. It also reduces the murder-hobo-y instincts.

As a player I tend to just make a character with my DM outside of the game, but I prefer to know what the other players are playing before I decide what to do. Either because I see a role that isn't done, or if everyone is a barbarian obviously I should be one too. With that DM session zero is more of a campaign intro than a party creation collab.

OldTrees1
2021-10-03, 06:02 PM
It is okay for a Session 0 to conclude in time to start Session 1 on the same day.

It is okay for a Session 0 to start as side chatter before/during/after sessions of the last campaign.

It is also okay for a Session 0 to be abridged. There is so much we can discuss during a session 0, but how much is relevant to the group and the campaign?

In my experience I have always had a session 0 but it might not cover exactly what the opening post describes nor cover it to that extent. For example character backstories tend to be in the player's head (based on clarifying questions for the GM) until the player reveals parts of the backstory through their PC's actions/words.

Basically session 0 is a tool that gives the group a blank check opportunity to discuss any and everything they need to. Duration and topics depend on what needs to be covered.


I have once required a new session 0 mid campaign to discuss an issue with mismatched expectations between different players. That resolved that issue sufficiently for the campaign to continue.

King of Nowhere
2021-10-03, 07:19 PM
we don't have exactly a session 0, but we do discuss all the stuff that must be discussed beforehand. generally over whatsapp, or discord.

Cluedrew
2021-10-03, 07:25 PM
Session 0 is usually split between the pitch, where the explanation (and any discussion) about the high level idea behind the campaign. I usually go over it again at the beginning of session 1 (in the "prelude" to the campaign). Which is when I like to do character creation. I can't force people to think out-loud and bounce ideas off each other and work out how the PCs are balanced, but I like to have them do it as a group anyways when I can.

Reversefigure4
2021-10-03, 08:31 PM
We do it most every time, but it depends on the campaign (and particularly, the length of it). We run towards long term campaigns - 150 lots of 3 hour sessions, taking up 3 or 4 years of real time, isn't unusual. Spending 3 of 500 hours on making sure everyone is on the same page is just a good investment of time, preventing us running into problems during the game because people aren't on the same page about genre, rules, expectations, etc. It's a timesaver, not a time spender, because it will take us a lot longer to dig ourselves out of the hole than to just talk it through in the first place.

For one or two session campaigns, it's a waste of time. "You are all musketeers in France. Take one skill at +2, one at + 4, one at +6. You have 5 minutes to make characters and a sentence about how you know each other would be nice". And we're going 10 minutes after we started the game.

A 10 session mini campaign is introduced with a page or two Word doc covering the rules and game pitch, followed by everyone swapping a few emails about the characters, is quite suitable for that length.

Pauly
2021-10-03, 08:33 PM
Always had a session zero in any campaign I’ve been in.
Character creation has generally been done in the group, although with some campaigns pre-generating your character was allowed.

Factors which affect the length of session zero.
1) Familiarity with the rules.
2) Familiarity with the campaign setting.
3) Explanation of group resources. Do you have a ship and what are its capabilities. Organizations the characters belong to. Any powerful NPCs helping the party. These kind of things.
4) Campaign themes. Dungeon bash? Diplomacy? Bounty hunting? Piracy/privateering?
5) What degree of PvP is allowed.
6) What source books are allowed.

If I’m doing something easy like a dungeon bashing campaign using D&D, player’s handbooks only characters, set in Greyhawk, then session zero takes 30 minutes tops and you roll straight into session 1.
If I’m doing a setting based on The old Blake’s 7 TV series, using home brew rules with a heavy emphasis on diplomacy and spycraft then session zero might take a full session.

As others have said it’s best if you can do as much of session zero as possible before the players sit down. Campaign pitches, character creation guides, quick start rules, even watching a movie or a few episodes of a series all can help

Satinavian
2021-10-04, 02:01 AM
We kinda have sessions zero but they differ wildly in scope

- if we start a new campaign, it is basically pitching campaign premise and making sure everyone is aboard and roughly getting an idea what people want to have as characters (only 2-3 word concepts) to make sure that is not too much skill overlap and we could make a theme group if desired. This can easily be done at the end of a session before people go home. Then everyone makes the character at home by themself, potentially emailing each other about common background if it is a theme group.

- if we start a new campaign in a new system, there will be a pitch of a system, the system rules explained in broad strokes, then the setting explained i broad strokes and discussed if people still want that. Then we discuss whether it will be just a short trial or a campaign and where in the new setting it will be and what characters might be appropriate. If extensive houserules will be used, those are either explained (if many people are new to the system) or discussed and decided upon. Then we might make characters.

- if a new group of players come together, we talk about each other, play preferrences and assumptions, sceduling and place, systems, settings, whether we want campaigns or long episodes, if we want rotating gms or not, a potential permanent gm will explain more about how they usually do things or how their games usually work and what are potential pitfalls. Generally the system in question is already known before the meating, but houserules and special tbale rules are not and everyone with prior experience has suggestions about them so that is discussed as well and when we are done with all of that we still have the "new campaign" thing coming. All of this takes so much time that we rarely make characters afterwards, so most are made at home. But i have had such groups making characters together at a second meeting.

---------------

Generally session zero is to align expectations, check assumptions and making sure everyone is on the same page with the rules not in the rulebooks. All of this useful but wheter it is necessary depends a lot on potential common background of the players. It is very well possible to have a open-table community where all of this is already established and people just take their characters and start playing. The opposite would be 6 people meeting the first time after someone posting a "looking for rpg group in city x after moving" at facebook.

But character creation generally does not really be part of session zero. While their are some benefits in doing it together, it is not strictly necessary and many people feel more creative when they can do it at their own pace and without distraction at home.

Vahnavoi
2021-10-04, 06:47 AM
I'm against the term "session zero" because you can just call game set-up, game set-up. :smalltongue:

Slightly more elaborately, "session zero" only reliably communicates that something ought to be done, in someone's opinion, before a game begins. It communicates very little beyond that and at worst, is misleading. For one, for simple games, you don't need a separate session for "session zero" stuff because setting up the game is naturally done as part of the first session. I'm not going to call anything I can do as part of an usual game session "session zero", and if I genuinely want to hold a session just for planning something, I'm going to call it a "planning session". For two, if there's any actual methodology to what people call "session zero" beyond "talk to people about what kind of game they'd like to play", I've yet to have it explained to me. There are multiple ways to set up a game, with different time and work requirements depending on type of game, so if there's something specific to "session zero", I'd like to know. If there's nothing specific to it, it's just another case of people inventing words to describe something that already had words to describe it.

DigoDragon
2021-10-04, 08:08 AM
I'm against the term "session zero" because you can just call game set-up, game set-up. :smalltongue:

That's fine. Whatever it's called at the table, the point is that the group is together setting up the system, the rules, characters, and backgrounds. It's not always a session for me, but end result is the same.

I always have such a "session" done when I GM because I want my players to sell me their character concepts. Get me to buy in to their background. I generally only half-build my campaign and fill the rest in with the background that characters have.

The Glyphstone
2021-10-04, 08:19 AM
The OP does sound like they're part of a more...disengaged? gaming scene. If everything is strangers joining random games like AL modules, and its assumed that fully formed characters will be dropped into a game with zero links to the world or other players, then everything important about 'Session 0' becomes irrelevant.

Whatever name you stick on it, the concept has never just been about approvals and permissions. Personally, I haven't had a RL game in years and all my gaming is PbP or discord/roll20, so like others here our 'session zeros' tend to be extended text conversations. But its always very much making sure the group is on the same page thematically and narratively before we begin.

Corsair14
2021-10-04, 08:27 AM
My group prefers to just get on with it. Leading up to the game I will send out a primer on the scenario, for example("you are in the crusades" although a bit more elaborate) what is and isnt allowed, any house rules etc. If they have any questions then they ask me.

I am not opposed to a session zero but we can handle most things without one. Then again the core of my group has been together for several years now and know my DM style regardless of what game we are playing.

Xervous
2021-10-04, 08:40 AM
All the on boarding is accomplished via slack/discord now, with voice/video calls clarifying rules, realms, and reasons for the party to be together.

Never again “you’re all in town but don’t know each other, form a party organically”. For that way leads the level 1 rope boss.

With the luxury of communication options we now have (much like information retrieval) most failures to get things properly aligned stem from a lack of effort rather than capability.

Psyren
2021-10-04, 09:22 AM
For that way leads the level 1 rope boss.

The what? Sounds like a story here.

Batcathat
2021-10-04, 09:37 AM
The what? Sounds like a story here.

Glad I'm not the only one wondering, I just assumed it was some piece of community lingo I hadn't picked up. :smallsmile:

Xervous
2021-10-04, 09:43 AM
The what? Sounds like a story here.

Party to be:
My cleric

The exploding fire wizard

The bard

The rogue

The samurai (yes he was warned, yes he drizzled authentic Japanese fish sauce on his meals and watched anime during some sessions)

What it all came down to was a conflict after thugs jumped my cleric (who had the mcguffin) and one of them had been exploded into paste by a Minotaur Greathammer crit. The fire wizard got a little happy and scorched people so the samurai decided to tie him up just to be safe. The samurai with high dex, skill point investment, and a natural 20 for the quality of the hog tying. The rogue fumbled with the rope but could not initially get it undone. The wizard’s suggestion that we cut it was met with protest from the samurai for he had spent good money on that quality rope (yeah it gave a +2 on tying things up).

By then the guards had arrived and the bard was able to convince them and get witnesses talking. All the while the rest of us are trying to undo the damned ropes. The guards inform the still prone wizard that he owes a fine for reckless magic use, which he is currently incapable of paying because we still haven’t gotten the rope off. The guards suggest cutting it at which point the samurai protests again.

Eventually we somehow managed to get to a calm enough situation we could take 20 and defeat the level 1 rope boss.

The level 3 boss was fog on ships.

This campaign also saw the use of summon celestial puppy 1 wands to test the spherical kill radius of the unboxed mcguffin.

Kevka Palazzo
2021-10-04, 09:45 AM
I didn't read all of the replies in the thread (my focus seems to be shot today) but I have to wonder if part of the sense of "hostility" to session 0 is because games that actively discuss a Session 0 probably do in the same area as safety tools, if not discussing safety tools in the session 0 section. Fallout 2d20 has a two-page spread in the Gamemastering chapter titled "Safety and Consent" and that's where it brings up session 0, for instance.

So given that there's a vocal minority of hobbyists who are against the inclusion or normalization of codified safety tools I think the aversion to session 0 is part of that in some way.

The Glyphstone
2021-10-04, 10:11 AM
I don't think I have ever seen a printed book that discussed Session 0 in explicit terms. It's always been a community-lingo term for the sort of concept people have thrown various names at in the thread so far. Or if I have, I don't remember it.

truemane
2021-10-04, 10:32 AM
I consistently find it strange how much of 'Session 0' talk centres on allowed sources and houserules and how little of it centres on tone, mood, expectations around table authority and rules adherence.

I always have a Session 0. Even when I'm doing one-off drop-in games, I have a Session 0. I think it's vitally important to tell players a little about my views on things like: The general expected tone/mood/atmosphere/genre of the game we're about to play
How PG/Adult I would like things to remain
Any meta-game expectations the module/adventure/game/story includes (or allows, or encourages, or resists, or rejects, or requires)
The place and function of alignment in the game world (descriptive vs prescriptive)
The relationship of crunch to fluff for things like Classes and Feats
How closely I generally adhere to the letter of the rules vs the perceived intent of the rules (which edges a bit into simulationism vs narrativism)
How I want rules disputes to be handled
How I want discomfort or conflict over IC or OC content to be handled
Content warnings (if applicable - although I try to do this on an individual basis, pre-table if I can)
My cell phone/electronics policy
My 'systematized prejudice' policy

All of this can be done in a matter of a few minutes. And it makes such a huge difference.

This is all stuff that seems simple and basic and intuitive but it's all stuff that different people make different decisions about, private, invisible, intensely important decisions, often without even realizing they are decisions.

As I've said elsewhere, I spend a lot of time playing with novice-level players, and I consider it part of my duty to start their journey off with the knowledge that these touchpoints aren't carved in stone. They're like dials or switches that can be adjusted and tweaked to create a particular kind of experience for a particular kind of audience, each just as valid as any other.

I am constantly flummoxed by the paucity of common accepted terms and shared expectations for these kinds of things, considering how long this hobby has been in existence, how much time a lot of us spend talking about how to do it. Everyone on this board knows first-hand how wildly divergent base assumptions about the simplest of things can be, and how fiercely intractable conflicts around them can get.

It's like (and pardon the sharp left turn, there's a point, trust me) hooking up on the internet. Non-heternormative people (people with non-heteronormative sexual or gender identities or members of alternate sexual communities) have, on average, spent a lot more time thinking about sex and sexuality and exploring options and experimenting with what they want and what they like and what they don't like. So when they hook up, they almost always start with some version of 'what are you into?' and then have a whole rich reservoir of shared terms and concepts and expectations and processes by which that question gets answered.

Heteronormative people, by contrast, often don't spend as much time exploring the edges of who they are (or, more accurately, have explored a much smaller area to a greater or less degree), and are often confused by the question, if it's even asked, and often have a hard time answering it in any detail.

In terms of role-players, we on this board are the non-heteronormative people. We spend so much time thinking about and arguing about the many faces of the hobby compared to more casual players who think 'role-playing' and 'D&D' are roughly the same thing.

And yet all of this never seems to get crunched down into a constructive, useful, nuanced way of talking about it (in the same way that optimization discussions often do).

It's weird. I've always found it weird. It's been weird to me since the first time I heard two people fight about exactly what a Chaotic Neutral person was allowed to do in, like, 1989.

TheStranger
2021-10-04, 10:39 AM
I don't think I have ever seen a printed book that discussed Session 0 in explicit terms. It's always been a community-lingo term for the sort of concept people have thrown various names at in the thread so far. Or if I have, I don't remember it.

This is my take on it. I think I’ve done an actual session 0 once or twice for a new system, but usually it’s a fairly informal process. In general, it’s good to have some kind of idea what to expect when a new game starts, but the amount of talking required varies greatly.

The place I see it used most often and insisted on most strongly on this forum is in DM advice/horror story threads, when it becomes apparent that the DM and the players have different expectations and maybe need to talk OOC/should have set some expectations before the campaign started.

Easy e
2021-10-04, 10:43 AM
For one or two session campaigns, it's a waste of time. "You are all musketeers in France. Take one skill at +2, one at + 4, one at +6. You have 5 minutes to make characters and a sentence about how you know each other would be nice". And we're going 10 minutes after we started the game.


Almost always this, and perhaps some discussion in a group chat.

Psyren
2021-10-04, 10:45 AM
I don't think I have ever seen a printed book that discussed Session 0 in explicit terms. It's always been a community-lingo term for the sort of concept people have thrown various names at in the thread so far. Or if I have, I don't remember it.

I believe the PF2 Game Mastery Guide mentions it. I remember seeing it in Starfinder somewhere as well.

Telok
2021-10-04, 11:00 AM
The OP does sound like they're part of a more...disengaged? gaming scene. If everything is strangers joining random games like AL modules, and its assumed that fully formed characters will be dropped into a game with zero links to the world or other players, then everything important about 'Session 0' becomes irrelevant.


Oddly enough its almost all multi-year, multi-campaign, multi-system groups. I avoid AL type stuff like the plague, not because of the actual ongoing plague but because thats where I see all the worst DMing on the occasions I pass by.

Mostly it seems the "session zero" stuff is informal, part of the initial game pitch and just answering player questions. Which isn't what I get from the "you need a session zero" posts. I mean, basic "sell the game" and setup are something you have to do just to have a game. The "session zero" posts usually seem to cover more tone, house rules, and managing character backgrounds. Which was sort of what prompted my question, my local gaming culture being rather hostile to delaying game start and things that smell like "DM interference" before play starts*.

Now, lots of these responses center around using recently in-vogue electronic communications (discord, game wikis, etc.). So a related question comes to mind: How much of the "session zero" (beyond the basic selling and setting up the game) that people are doing is a recent development over the past 2-3 years and relies on players reading more than half a page of setting stuff?


* in amazing displays of hipocrisy certain DMs seem to habitually ignore character background, then when they need to info dump they dictate some generic major life event for your character to justify it. The same ones when playing never do any sort of backgrounds so that "the DM can't use it to screw me over".

PhoenixPhyre
2021-10-04, 11:17 AM
Now, lots of these responses center around using recently in-vogue electronic communications (discord, game wikis, etc.). So a related question comes to mind: How much of the "session zero" (beyond the basic selling and setting up the game) that people are doing is a recent development over the past 2-3 years and relies on players reading more than half a page of setting stuff?


My session 0 for the current campaign (~1 year old, virtual, all strangers to me) didn't expect them to read much, mainly some quest seeds (a few sentence blurbs), but I did make the entire wiki available. Some read it, others have read more later, but yeah. We'd already hashed out characters via discord in the week or two running up to the game, so session 0 was mostly just a few housekeeping matters (timing, basic meta rules[1], etc) and then the narrative start (ie people meeting up and describing characters).

My session 0 for my next campaign with most of those same people (started with 7, dropped to 4 for various, mostly IRL reasons pretty early on) has been going on via discord for...a month now? For a game not expected to start until we finish the current one, which is likely to be another month or more and likely the end of the year. We've been actively writing lore for that section of the world, homebrewing classes, talking backstories, etc.

On the other hand, most of my session 0s when running school-based campaigns were more like herding cats and making characters, because no one had their own books and everyone needed advice/assistance. Those were much more linear on my end, at least initially. And I didn't expect anyone to read anything unless they wanted to.

[1] things like "don't be a jerk. Let us know if you'll miss a session. No PvP. I won't kill named backstory characters without consultation and giving the character a chance to intervene." etc. Not houserules for actually playing the game, but expectations of player/DM conduct at the table.

Ikoma
2021-10-04, 11:37 AM
Almost always, but the games I like tend to be less well known. So it'll go something like this:
1) game pitch: I'll post on social something like "hey guys, I want to run a game called 'through the breach.' It's a weird west game full of corruption and villainy in an alternate dimension. There are monsters, undead, guns and weird tech. You will be mercenaries outside the law taking whatever jobs you can to stay afloat."

2) clarification: sent out to this who were interested, "so the setting of the game is a place called Malifaux. It's in another dimension, just a short train ride through hell from earth. It's corrupt, violent, and mean. I'm looking for characters that, despite that, try to do the right thing (for a person's idea of right, anyway). Think more firefly with magic. Here is some setting and character info"

3) group selection: I'll gather the group, talk about the setting and we'll do char gen as a group (with some ideas I stole from the original dresden files rpg).

4) start game proper

I'm not sure which of those steps is considered session 0, but it's been a pretty fail safe way to get groups that play well together

kyoryu
2021-10-04, 11:42 AM
Almost always, whether a formal one or otherwise.

The amount of Session Zero depends almost entirely on how much the people involved know each other. The less they know each other, the more stuff needs to be explicit. (Note that this applies to safety tools as well. A bunch of friends doing a fairly "light-hearted" dungeon romp? No need. A bunch of strangers at a con doing some kind of horror scenario? More useful.)

Session Zero should cover:

1) Genre
2) Rules
3) Game concept (which is different from genre)
4) Who the PCs are and why they're dealing with each other
5) Expectations of conduct (incl language, etc.)
6) What themes may be encountered, especially if they might be problematic for some

Note that for a group that's played together a while, a lot of these may be implicit already, and don't need to be discussed. If so, great!

The Glyphstone
2021-10-04, 11:50 AM
Oddly enough its almost all multi-year, multi-campaign, multi-system groups. I avoid AL type stuff like the plague, not because of the actual ongoing plague but because thats where I see all the worst DMing on the occasions I pass by.

Mostly it seems the "session zero" stuff is informal, part of the initial game pitch and just answering player questions. Which isn't what I get from the "you need a session zero" posts. I mean, basic "sell the game" and setup are something you have to do just to have a game. The "session zero" posts usually seem to cover more tone, house rules, and managing character backgrounds. Which was sort of what prompted my question, my local gaming culture being rather hostile to delaying game start and things that smell like "DM interference" before play starts*.

Now, lots of these responses center around using recently in-vogue electronic communications (discord, game wikis, etc.). So a related question comes to mind: How much of the "session zero" (beyond the basic selling and setting up the game) that people are doing is a recent development over the past 2-3 years and relies on players reading more than half a page of setting stuff?


* in amazing displays of hipocrisy certain DMs seem to habitually ignore character background, then when they need to info dump they dictate some generic major life event for your character to justify it. The same ones when playing never do any sort of backgrounds so that "the DM can't use it to screw me over".

Okay, that comes across less as disengaged and more like there is a cultural undercurrent of DM-vs-player antagonism, like it's expected the DM is pitted against the players rather than working with them, in a competition or conflict. That's also a fundamental clash against the principles behind 'session 0', at least as I understand the term.

icefractal
2021-10-04, 01:22 PM
One thing I could see being a point of contention about Session 0 is the develop-in-advance / develop-in-play split in terms of fleshing out PCs.

Like from a fully DIA stance, by the time the game started you'd have a relatively complete backstory, known relationships with the other PCs, a fleshed out personality, and some plans on future character development / plot arcs.

But from a fully DIP stance, you don't do any of those things. You start with just a basic "elevator pitch" character concept and flesh it out during the course of play. And plot arcs based on events that happened at the table are preferable to plot arcs based on a non-played backstory.

For people in the latter camp, a Session 0 that demands they determine all this stuff at the start is going to seem like purely an imposition. Of course few people are 100% one style or the other, and I think even for a DIP style there's plenty of stuff you can and should reach agreement on ahead of time.


Personally speaking, I find that "figure out why the **** these particular characters would ever work together, much less continue working together" is something that wastes time and/or requires lampshading much more often than it yields greatness. So I'm in favor of figuring some intra-party connections and establishing a tone/alignment that everyone's ok with ahead of time.

But on the other hand, I'm fine if my backstory never becomes important - events based off things that happened in-play are usually more satisfying and don't require trying to fake a deep relationship with an NPC I've never interacted with before.

kyoryu
2021-10-04, 01:32 PM
For people in the latter camp, a Session 0 that demands they determine all this stuff at the start is going to seem like purely an imposition. Of course few people are 100% one style or the other, and I think even for a DIP style there's plenty of stuff you can and should reach agreement on ahead of time.

Sure, and HOW MUCH is determined in Session 0 is certainly a matter of preference. The character's "High Concept" should be sufficient.


Personally speaking, I find that "figure out why the **** these particular characters would ever work together, much less continue working together" is something that wastes time and/or requires lampshading much more often than it yields greatness. So I'm in favor of figuring some intra-party connections and establishing a tone/alignment that everyone's ok with ahead of time.

One. Thousand. Percent. "Let's play D&D!" is a pitch that doesn't really have a good success rate.


But on the other hand, I'm fine if my backstory never becomes important - events based off things that happened in-play are usually more satisfying and don't require trying to fake a deep relationship with an NPC I've never interacted with before.

The most important thing about a character is their goals and values - where they're going is far more interesting than where they've been.

King of Nowhere
2021-10-04, 02:18 PM
Mostly it seems the "session zero" stuff is informal, part of the initial game pitch and just answering player questions. Which isn't what I get from the "you need a session zero" posts. I mean, basic "sell the game" and setup are something you have to do just to have a game. The "session zero" posts usually seem to cover more tone, house rules, and managing character backgrounds. Which was sort of what prompted my question, my local gaming culture being rather hostile to delaying game start and things that smell like "DM interference" before play starts*.


oh, that's a common problem with reading this forum.
this forum has very good advice, but it often gets fixated in the way it conveys some messages, so that if you take them at face value they come distorted. For example, when i was younger and inexperienced, i kept reading on this forum how wizards are immensely powerful and puny martials can't do anything. and i didn't knew enough to figure out it only applies to TO. So I was dming for my group of total noobs, and i decided to shower favors on the party barbarian.
once i realized my mistake, i spent the rest of the campaign trying to keep the tier 1 classes relevant.

and there's another thread with a guy who read the whole "railroading is bad and you should feel bad" and he made a completely open world, except his players are used to be railroaded and they'll just accept quests from anyone, including massacring villages - which makes them uncomfortable, but they think they must do it to advance "the plot". meanwhile the dm expects them to rebel against those orders, but he won't tell them because he's afraid telling his expectations would be "railroading"...

bottom line is, always apply anything you read on this forum with a grain of salt, and a healty dose of adapting it to your specific situation. Having a bit of discussion about settings, expectations, tone of the game and other stuff like this, that's only sensible, and it's good advice. Sitting down and having a whole session whose sole purpose is doing that? that will depend on specifics.




* in amazing displays of hipocrisy certain DMs seem to habitually ignore character background, then when they need to info dump they dictate some generic major life event for your character to justify it. The same ones when playing never do any sort of backgrounds so that "the DM can't use it to screw me over".

and this is another common problem with good gaming practices. When good gaming practices interact with toxic gamers, the toxic gamers win. when you find a railroading, toxic, abusive "i'm here to tell you a story where your character will play a minor part without being able to interfere, and I'm going to abuse my power to screw your character whenever i see the opportunity" kind of dm, then no amount of good gaming practices will stop him from doing that. except for the final good practice, which is, quit the toxic game.

Personally, i see inserting your character backstory into the setting to be a bonus for everyone involved. If you are planning a long, multi-year campaign, and some players read the info about the world and have ideas to place their characters in there, it can make the game more immersive for everybody. My table had many good moments that made use of backstories set into the campaign world. And for that, it's definitely worthy to spend a couple hours discussing backstories and worldbuilding lore together

Vahnavoi
2021-10-04, 02:55 PM
I don't think I have ever seen a printed book that discussed Session 0 in explicit terms. It's always been a community-lingo term for the sort of concept people have thrown various names at in the thread so far. Or if I have, I don't remember it.

What would even count? Like, let's look at truemane's list:



I always have a Session 0. Even when I'm doing one-off drop-in games, I have a Session 0. I think it's vitally important to tell players a little about my views on things like: The general expected tone/mood/atmosphere/genre of the game we're about to play
How PG/Adult I would like things to remain
Any meta-game expectations the module/adventure/game/story includes (or allows, or encourages, or resists, or rejects, or requires)
The place and function of alignment in the game world (descriptive vs prescriptive)
The relationship of crunch to fluff for things like Classes and Feats
How closely I generally adhere to the letter of the rules vs the perceived intent of the rules (which edges a bit into simulationism vs narrativism)
How I want rules disputes to be handled
How I want discomfort or conflict over IC or OC content to be handled
Content warnings (if applicable - although I try to do this on an individual basis, pre-table if I can)
My cell phone/electronics policy
My 'systematized prejudice' policy

Event organizers, like conventions but also including virtual playspaces like the play-by-post subforums, have had forms for a game master to put this information in (a 30+ question FAQ for these forums!) for decades, well before "session zero" became a popular term on the internet. I have gaming materials dating back to late 70s which cover these in part or in full in the game books.

So the idea of telling what kind of a game you're about to run as part of your game set-up isn't exactly new, and people weren't having problems of doing it. If there's more discussion on the subject right now than there used to, I'd chalk that to RPGs having become more popular as of late, so there are more new hobbyists who've yet to learn this stuff.

You can make comparison to "Rule Zero". In case you somehow don't know, "rule zero" as a term comes from outside RPGs and typically means some overarching, often implied rule of a rules system. Famously, Isaac Asimov, who came up with three laws of robotics, applied the concept to them in some of his later stories. "Rule zero" in roleplaying games has come to mean "Game master is always right", but the joke is that in earliest RPGs, this wasn't a "rule zero". Rather, it's just a fancy way of saying "game master has final say over game events", which is actual stated rule in D&D and in fact in precursors of D&D going all the way back to Reisswitz rules Kriegspiel in 19th century!

Just like you never really need to use the term "rule zero" when explaining real rules of a specific game to people, you never really need to use term "session zero" to explain game set-up to people. It's just a colloquialism.

Slipjig
2021-10-04, 03:03 PM
I didn't have an actual everybody around the table session, but the last time I started a campaign I sent all my players an email laying out the basic background of the game world, putting some left and right limits on character background, and letting them know my house rules.

You can have a pretty light hand on character creation while still setting some limits on concepts that simply wouldn't mesh with your campaign.

Yora
2021-10-04, 03:37 PM
I have a very strict policy for myself, which is that the first time we get together to play characters, we also get to play a bit.

In the past I did frequently ask players what they would want to play. I always got an answer, and it was always the same answer. "Whatever you want to run."
So I don't ask anymore. Instead I spend a couple of weeks or even months to prepare a really good campaign setup, and then I go asking who wants to play in it. Never got any complains about that.

Only annoying thing is that any time you ask a question about campaign structure or content, half the replies are worthless "talk with your players."

KillianHawkeye
2021-10-04, 03:52 PM
We have those things happen, but not in a separate session. This is a group that generally meets weekly, so it's more like:

Week 1, after or before the game: "Hey, I'm thinking about running a game where you build up a city in a post-apocalyptic world ... [insert details]. The system would be ___. Who'd be interested in that?"
Week 2: "So here's more details on the setting and mechanics. Anyone got a character concept?" (some people do, some don't yet).
At this point people discuss character concepts, campaign style, tone, and other "Session 0" parameters over the course of several weeks, either by text message or in person before/after the current game.
Week N: "We're going to start the post-apocalypse game next week. Everyone ready?" At this point everyone should have a character concept, any final discussion about how they fit together can occur, and the next week will be Session 1.

So there effectively is a Session 0, but it's stretched out over a period of time and never occupies an entire session. Personally, I like this style - you're not forced to come up with a character on the spot, much less built it at the table (I hate building characters at the table unless the system is simple), and the GM has plenty of time to adjust campaign details based on the feedback.

This is also how my group tends to operate, as we are friends who spend time discussing things before and after each game session (including other upcoming games) and not just random strangers who show up to game and then leave without socializing.

Felhammer
2021-10-04, 04:27 PM
When I play in real life, I usually:


Ask all of my friends if they are interested in playing D&D. We find a time and a place that works for everyone.
I then create 4 to 6 campaign pitches. Each is a campaign I would like to run but I leave the final decision up to my players, that way they have agency over what they are playing (this method usually massively increases player buy-in and engagement).
We then meet up in real life and I present the campaign pitches to the players. We collectively discuss each and I answer any questions.
The players then rank each pitch, from their favorite to their least favorite
I input the scores into a spread sheet to determine which pitch wins.
I announce the winning pitch.
I then discuss any house rules I may have that both suit my play style and the style of game that we will be playing.
I ask the players by which method they would prefer to generate their ability scores. Sometimes this is easy as everyone just wants point buy. Some times it is more complicated as players want to roll for stats, so there has to be a discussion about how to generate stats, how many sets you can generate, etc.
I then ask the players how they would like to handle Hit Points. Some groups like playing it by the book, others like rolling, others like rolling with a safety net, etc.
We then start talking about the characters and which classes/races everyone wants to play. We discuss how these characters would fit in with one another and with the campaign pitch's themes.
Players then start making their characters. Unless we are playing level 1, we will usually spend an hour or so making characters then end the session, to allow everyone to think about their characters more and how best to express them mechanically.
A week passes and we start session 1.


I do not often call it Session 0 but this very first meeting is, for all intents and purposes, session 0.

Is this an a-typical way to create a campaign? Yes but I find it is very helpful in getting the players to buy into the concept and make characters that suit the needs of the pitch.

Vahnavoi
2021-10-05, 03:16 AM
In the past I did frequently ask players what they would want to play. I always got an answer, and it was always the same answer. "Whatever you want to run."
So I don't ask anymore. Instead I spend a couple of weeks or even months to prepare a really good campaign setup, and then I go asking who wants to play in it. Never got any complains about that.

This brings to mind a saying about genies, which can be applied to game masters as well:

There's three type of game masters.

Firstly, the kind to which you can just tell "run whatever you want to run" and be reasonably safe in the assumption that you'll like it too.

Secondly, the kind who don't want what you want, so you can never be safe, no matter what you tell them.

Lastly, the kind who just aren't very skilled.

With the first group, micromanaging is pointless, with the second group, it's useless, and with the last group, you need to know the steps of how to make a game you'd like yourself or it won't happen.


Only annoying thing is that any time you ask a question about campaign structure or content, half the replies are worthless "talk with your players."

Well yeah, "talking with your players" is only useful if they can explicitly formulate what they want, or if you know the right questions to dig the information from them. If they can't and you don't, it's a waste of time and you'd be better of playtesting games through trial and error.

King of Nowhere
2021-10-05, 03:40 AM
On the other hand, talking to your players doesn'take much effort and it's good troubleshooting, so it's not bad advice.
It's the equivalent of "check if the plug is inserted properly" question that any customer service will ask when you report your pc not working: a simple check that should be done first, before trying more complicated stuff

Easy e
2021-10-05, 09:49 AM
Generally speaking, my players have no idea what they want; they just want to be entertained. They are not even softcore RPG folks.

Therefore, when it comes to talking to my players you really have to walk them down a probing funnel; which sounds way worse than it actually is...... honest.

You have to start with open ended questions, and then slowly narrow down with clarifying questions, and then finalize it with closed ended questions.

For example;

"What genre do you wan to play?"
-Sci-fi
"Okay, do you want space opera like Star Wars, Hard Sci FI like 2001, horror like Alien, or cyberpunk like Blade Runner, or something else?"
- More like Gundam or Pacific Rim!
"Oh, I did not expect that. What about Pacific Rim or Gundam are you looking for?"
- <Looks around room shiftily> We want to have big robots smashing into each other.... or monsters.
"So you want to focus on the fighting part of it?"
- Yeah, some of that. However we also want to save the world!
"Okay, so you want epic, big-robot battles with the fate of the world in the balance?"
- Yeah, I think that is what we want this time!
"All right then. Let's start with some characters..... what do you want to play in this world? Why are you all together?"
- Ahhhhh, don't know? Maybe a couple pilots and their support folks?
"Is it okay if all players are pilots, and I play as all the support folks?"
- Yeah

I think you see how this works..... you have to tease out the flavor of what they want to do with a funnel that looks like:

Open ended---> Clarifying question--> Closed Yes/No questions

Psyren
2021-10-05, 10:04 AM
What would even count? Like, let's look at truemane's list:



Event organizers, like conventions but also including virtual playspaces like the play-by-post subforums, have had forms for a game master to put this information in (a 30+ question FAQ for these forums!) for decades, well before "session zero" became a popular term on the internet. I have gaming materials dating back to late 70s which cover these in part or in full in the game books.

So the idea of telling what kind of a game you're about to run as part of your game set-up isn't exactly new, and people weren't having problems of doing it. If there's more discussion on the subject right now than there used to, I'd chalk that to RPGs having become more popular as of late, so there are more new hobbyists who've yet to learn this stuff.

You can make comparison to "Rule Zero". In case you somehow don't know, "rule zero" as a term comes from outside RPGs and typically means some overarching, often implied rule of a rules system. Famously, Isaac Asimov, who came up with three laws of robotics, applied the concept to them in some of his later stories. "Rule zero" in roleplaying games has come to mean "Game master is always right", but the joke is that in earliest RPGs, this wasn't a "rule zero". Rather, it's just a fancy way of saying "game master has final say over game events", which is actual stated rule in D&D and in fact in precursors of D&D going all the way back to Reisswitz rules Kriegspiel in 19th century!

Just like you never really need to use the term "rule zero" when explaining real rules of a specific game to people, you never really need to use term "session zero" to explain game set-up to people. It's just a colloquialism.

Rule zero is in a few of the books as well. Stuff that seem obvious to us on a tabletop-oriented forum aren't necessarily so for those breaking into the hobby from scratch, so there's nothing wrong with books that decide to mention this stuff.

Telok
2021-10-05, 10:36 AM
Rule zero is in a few of the books as well. Stuff that seem obvious to us on a tabletop-oriented forum aren't necessarily so for those breaking into the hobby from scratch, so there's nothing wrong with books that decide to mention this stuff.

Man, ain't that the truth. Back when I started even that basic bell curve probability discussion in the AD&D DMG was useful because it was my first intro to real probability math.

Xervous
2021-10-05, 11:06 AM
Rule zero is in a few of the books as well. Stuff that seem obvious to us on a tabletop-oriented forum aren't necessarily so for those breaking into the hobby from scratch, so there's nothing wrong with books that decide to mention this stuff.

One of my biggest gripes is that so few books acknowledge stuff that’s been known and understood for decades, instead leaving it up to old players to relay the knowledge or new players to figure it out on their own.

Quertus
2021-10-05, 11:37 AM
So I'm asking the playground: In your real life, in person, TTRPGs, do you really have a session zero where the players all come in without completed character sheets, talk to each other about making their characters fit the game & party, the GM lays out the tone & house rules, backstories are swapped & adjusted, and that's pretty much the whole 3-5 hour session?

That's… too narrow a definition.

I've done the gamut. I've encountered groups with cultures like what your area has, tables that are allergic to wasting time even talking about a game (so I've experienced areas like yours). I've had Session 0 that were literally a session. I've had extended conversations about the game over weeks (including starting during the "previous" game).

I've had "discuss, then create characters, go!" I've had "the characters and the party already exist; the Session 0 is 'what do they do next?'.". I've had mid-campaign "oops, we forgot to Session 0 - let's hash things out now".

I've had unsuccessful Session 0 attempts, where "requirement: has no money" did not convey what the GM thought it did, and their one and only plot hook of "I'll pay you" was insufficient / ill-suited to hook several of the characters.

I've had games whose setup clearly indicated the need for a Session 0, like the party with the Paladin, the Assassin, the Undead Hunter, the Undead Master, and my character. Or the party where ~6/12 PCs wanted to accept the quest to assassinate the good and rightful king, and the other half wanted to imprison / murder the traitor for even suggesting such a thing.

But, IME, the best results come from everyone sitting down at the table with a mix of old and new characters, running a series of one-shots to demonstrate everyone's range and calibrate vocabulary, then making informed decisions about what kind of game with which characters everyone would enjoy.

-----

@truemane - well, now, this is really weird. Like, almost as weird as if I probed about the "Non-heternormative" preference synchronization phase.

What you posted is great, but… it clearly involves a mindset alien to my experience. Because you're exclusively touching a layer that, while important, I've never seen anyone even use as the *focus*, let alone the entirely of Session 0.

IME, the focus has always been in optimizing the ingredients - the characters and the campaign - and the basic directive of "trying to make an Italian dish" (the tone), with discussions of spice level and procedures should it catch on fire (including the location of the emergency exits) relegated to the background.

My experience with Session 0, the focus is on things like "creating/choosing characters who can/will work together", "choosing a setting and campaign premise we'll all enjoy", etc, and "basic style/tone" - the much more hopeful "how do we make fun?" than the more fatalistic, "by what procedures shall we provide redress of grievances?".

Yes, a lot of that is covered, but… the idea of making that the focus is foreign to me.

farothel
2021-10-05, 12:37 PM
We always do something in our tabletop group, although it's as mentioned before often stretched out over multiple weeks. As we're nearing the end of a campaign, one of the players (we rotate GM duties amongst four out of six players) comes up with a new campaign idea and over the course of the next gaming sessions (at the end before we all go home) we talk things through and discuss the game, the house rules, character concepts, etc. Then either we create characters and email them to the GM, or do a session to create them depending on how heavy the system is and how much we want to keep backgrounds hidden from the other players. The first session is often a shorter one and we put some last minute things together before we start.

This system has worked very well for us for the 20 or so years we've been gaming together.

LibraryOgre
2021-10-05, 01:12 PM
IME, a lot of campaigns tend to be somewhat GM-centric... the GM has a story idea, in a setting, that will work with certain characters ("Why can't I have an X-wing?" "Well, first of all, we're playing Dark Sun..."). They may have some flexibility there ("Ok, your X-Wing is crashed, and your Jedi powers are now psionics, and your lightsaber is a special psionic artifact..."), but a lot comes down to "Well, here's the game I prepped, come up with something that works for that."

What works can change as the game goes on... we had two Rifts games that went that way. One started with the Coalition, another with True Atlanteans, but as the game progressed, we got characters from outside of that (the CS campaign wound up deep in Russia, and wound up working with some magic-users to survive; the True Atlantean campaign eventually included allies)... but if everyone pushes for special characters from outside of the campaign design, the GMs work is kind of useless.

But, to an extent, that can also come down to "This meeting could have been an e-mail", especially with established groups. I know what Bob, Brian, Dave, and Sarah are like and are likely to play, so I'm not going to create a game that isn't going to get at least some buy-in from them (but, likewise, they may give me some benefit of the doubt because they know me). If I say "Hey, everyone, we're playing Hackmaster, and we're going to start in P'Bapar at 3rd level. Here's what else you're getting", and they know Hackmaster and P'Bapar, there's no real NEED for us to hash it out... session 0 is the years we've played together. Or session 0 could be the rest of the session that ended in a TPK, or a "Ok, we've kind of achieved our goals, what do we play next?"

kyoryu
2021-10-05, 01:32 PM
But, to an extent, that can also come down to "This meeting could have been an e-mail", especially with established groups. I know what Bob, Brian, Dave, and Sarah are like and are likely to play, so I'm not going to create a game that isn't going to get at least some buy-in from them (but, likewise, they may give me some benefit of the doubt because they know me). If I say "Hey, everyone, we're playing Hackmaster, and we're going to start in P'Bapar at 3rd level. Here's what else you're getting", and they know Hackmaster and P'Bapar, there's no real NEED for us to hash it out... session 0 is the years we've played together. Or session 0 could be the rest of the session that ended in a TPK, or a "Ok, we've kind of achieved our goals, what do we play next?"

I 100% agree with this. I think the need for a formalized, actual session zero increases if you're dealing with a group of strangers. Getting everyone in the same room prior to play, in that case, has a lot of value.

Established groups? Not so much, especially when using systems familiar to them and the group.

Martin Greywolf
2021-10-05, 02:56 PM
I always have a session 0. FATE kind of... can't work without one, you need it for basic character creation and it is explicitly noted in teh rules. If you go by the book, you're even creating the world during it to some degree.

That said, I've bent it often enough by having said session, then hashing out things via discord or what have you and sometimes just asking players to trust me on some things.

Still, the one game I ran for a community I wasn't part of to show them what this tabletop thing was all about had a pretty darn formal one, and it's a good thing we did. Some folks wanted to be a tad more anime, and others a tad more sex comedy that others were comfortable with, and catching that was definitely a good thing, since it meant we could all focus on making wholesome lama jokes during actual play.

Vahnavoi
2021-10-06, 08:06 AM
Rule zero is in a few of the books as well. Stuff that seem obvious to us on a tabletop-oriented forum aren't necessarily so for those breaking into the hobby from scratch, so there's nothing wrong with books that decide to mention this stuff.


One of my biggest gripes is that so few books acknowledge stuff that’s been known and understood for decades, instead leaving it up to old players to relay the knowledge or new players to figure it out on their own.

You two are missing the point. "Rule zero" came about as a witty way to refer to something that was already explained as a proper rule in the books. Same is largely true of "session zero". They don't explain anything new, instead, they are things that need explaining. If you are writing a new game for new players, they have zero place in the rules text, their correct place is in a hobby glossary.

Quertus
2021-10-06, 09:26 AM
("Ok, your X-Wing is crashed, and your Jedi powers are now psionics, and your lightsaber is a special psionic artifact...")

No need to reinvent the wheel!

AFB, but the 2e Magic Item Compendium had a lightsaber. It was called a Wand of _____, dealt 1d10 damage, and was usable by all classes. No charges.

Eldan
2021-10-06, 10:10 AM
So, the first thing to specify is that I don't play with "randos". I have a group of maybe up to 10 friends that have made up all my gaming groups for the last fifteen years.

Meaning a lot of what I'd discuss in a session 0 is already covered because we have similar expectations. They all know I won't use miniatures or battlemaps. They know my opinions on balance. We share a similar sense of humour and propriety and for example won't have any sex happen "on screen". We share similar feelings of integrating backstory into campaign story and party structure.

The entire rest... can be pretty informal. A typical discussion I have with my friends might go along the lines of:

"Hey guys, I'm thinking of running a D&D campaign, who's in?"
Which would get me a few names.
"Cool. Anyone got a backstory or special race/class they want to use?"
At which point I'd start writing the actual campaign when the ideas come in. If a player wants to be a pirate, I'd write a pirate campaign.

Alternatively, I might approach players and say "Hey guys, I'm thinking of running a Degenesis campaign about the border skirmishes between the Pheromancers and the Helvetics set in the western Cantons." Players would then build a character with a story who'd care about that.

Or "Hey guys, I have this idea for a detective adventure, write up some detectives".

Or of course just "Hey, I found this system I want to use for a post-apocalyptic comedy one shot, everyone build a cartoonish idiot, please."


That's kind of like a session 0 to me?

A real, formal session where everyone comes in and we discuss right there is rarer. We've had it on occasion. For example, our latest Fate/Dresden Files campaign, we used the location and party creation rules and the players built off each other's background ideas, so that the party now consists of a jew, a muslim, a catholic and a weird kind of gnostic philosopher/alchemist who all work for the same international/ecumenical organisation who fights rival cults and hunts down religious artefacts. Totally unplanned, wasn't remotely any story idea I had, but grew out of building character backstories together at the table.


Edit: forgot what I actually wanted to add:
If I add new players, or join another group for a game or two, as has happened before, I do a lot of careful sniffing out, which is also a kind of unofficial rule 0. I've had bad experiences, so before I play with someone, I want to have a general idea of their sense of humour, their playstyle, what the ythink is acceptable to have happen ingame and how players and GM should treat each other.

Vahnavoi
2021-10-06, 02:32 PM
Here's a challenge for people in this thread:

Copy this thread, or any other text dealing with "session zero", into a text editor and do a search-and-replace, changing "session zero" into "planning session".

Is the text any less clear?

Now do a web search for "planning session" and do the reverse to any document on planning sessions.

Is the text any less clear?

Eldan
2021-10-06, 03:48 PM
I mean, they are obviously two terms for the same thing. Your point being?

kyoryu
2021-10-06, 03:58 PM
I mean, they are obviously two terms for the same thing. Your point being?

I'm presuming that a lot of the contention around the idea isn't about the idea, but rather the terminology being used as something of a shibboleth.

Quertus
2021-10-06, 04:12 PM
Here's a challenge for people in this thread:

Copy this thread, or any other text dealing with "session zero", into a text editor and do a search-and-replace, changing "session zero" into "planning session".

Is the text any less clear?

Now do a web search for "planning session" and do the reverse to any document on planning sessions.

Is the text any less clear?

Well, yes. Because, as a software developer, I need an array index to access the data in the first place. So I need to know that we're talking about Session(0) before setting it's Name variable to "Planning Session". EDIT: also, a find and replace on "session zero" will exclude "Session 0" :P

I think someone earlier in the thread explained the nature of inheritance that resulted in this specific terminology being used, although I find myself too senile to recall the specifics of the origin of the term.

Prior to this thread, I had believed that "Session 0" carried with it implicit indication of the type of planning to be carried out. This added to my confusion re: ingredients and style vs kitchen fire procedure and location of emergency exits as focal points.

So I am as yet uncertain whether they are synonyms, or whether one is a subset of the other, but they are definitely at the very least highly related.

An evaluation of the clarity gained vs the clarity lost by transitioning from using the terminology "Session 0" to "Planning Session" (or the more apt "Planning Phase", since, as evidenced, it is not bound in either direction to the time of a Session) is likely both beyond the scope of this thread, and the capabilities of even the vaunted Playground.

Vahnavoi
2021-10-06, 04:23 PM
I mean, they are obviously two terms for the same thing.

Obvious to who?


Your point being?

If "planning session" is for all cases at least as clear as "session zero", why you'd ever use the latter over the former?

OldTrees1
2021-10-06, 04:34 PM
If "planning session" is for all cases at least as clear as "session zero", why you'd ever use the latter over the former?

I will probably continue to call it Session 0 out of habit instead of planning session, but I see your point. Just like I am used to calling a Potato a Potato instead of a Potato.

Session 0 communicates being before session 1 a bit better than planning session does. Planning session communicates the agenda (planning & communicating) a bit better than session 0 does. I think the ideal word choice might depend on who I am communicating with.

I appreciate something about <planning sessions> be included in the RPG handbooks if the RPG wants new players in their audience. It is a useful resource. However I don't need that section to call it a <XYZ> instead of a <zyx>.

Cluedrew
2021-10-06, 08:44 PM
But why rename session 0 to planning session when session 0 is an established term in the role-playing lexicon?

GentlemanVoodoo
2021-10-06, 09:04 PM
So I'm asking the playground: In your real life, in person, TTRPGs, do you really have a session zero where the players all come in without completed character sheets, talk to each other about making their characters fit the game & party, the GM lays out the tone & house rules, backstories are swapped & adjusted, and that's pretty much the whole 3-5 hour session?

Yes. Session 0 is like the pirate code, a guideline more as a harden rule. It is a guideline that makes sense in that people are informed as to what the DM is planning, what players would like to experience from their perspectives, among other things. To many times I have seen a player come to my groups, character sheet ready to go, only to find out what they were wanting to do is void for some reason because a pre-planning did not occur.

It is for this reason why a session 0 is ideal in that it gives the players an idea of what is and is not to be expected. For some groups, it does take a meet up to get things hammered out and characters designed. Other groups can accomplish this by email, perhaps a group chat, or some other medium provided they stay in communication. Even that is its own form of session 0.

dafrca
2021-10-06, 09:10 PM
I never ran a formal session zero per say but we often got together for a dinner to discuss what we wanted to do next. Those conversations were less the GM dictating things and more like the group thinking about what we all wanted.

I would also point out we sometimes would have a session zero type meeting during the longer campaigns to check in with everyone and make sure people were having fun and what they may want to see going forward (GM included) so we didn't lose sight of the fact this is a game not work. :smallsmile:

Vahnavoi
2021-10-06, 09:31 PM
But why rename session 0 to planning session when session 0 is an established term in the role-playing lexicon?

*scrubbed*

Pauly
2021-10-07, 02:39 AM
Here's a challenge for people in this thread:

Copy this thread, or any other text dealing with "session zero", into a text editor and do a search-and-replace, changing "session zero" into "planning session".

Is the text any less clear?

Now do a web search for "planning session" and do the reverse to any document on planning sessions.

Is the text any less clear?

Yes because they are different things, at least in the context of gaming groups I’ve been involved in.

Planning sessions are about logistics. Who brings what books, when and where shall we meet, what software will be used, how to use character generators and so forth.

Session zero is about expectations. What character types are viable. What is the tone of the campaign. How much PvP is acceptable.

They aren’t mutually exclusive and there is, obviously, some degree of overlay between the two. As people have been pointing out in this thread they are usually rolled into other activities and it would be highly unusual for a campaign to have a formal planning session and a formal session zero.

dafrca
2021-10-07, 10:32 AM
As people have been pointing out in this thread they are usually rolled into other activities and it would be highly unusual for a campaign to have a formal planning session and a formal session zero.
As you define the two, I will say I have never, ever, tried to have a formal session zero and a different formal planning session. I have never seen a need to do so. Rather, call it what you want, I have just talked with the players and/or GMs and we tried to at least be closely aligned on the goals and expectations for both the logistics (I will bring a bag of chips each week) or expectations and game issues (we are all agreeing to play a horror focused campaign this time). :smallsmile:

Jay R
2021-10-07, 01:31 PM
People are different; they like different things; and that's OK. Therefore the same answer won't work for all groups.

What session zero is supposed to do can be done much better (for my purposes) privately by email. I want to go back and forth with my players (if I'm the GM) or with the GM and sometimes the other players (if I'm a player).

That gives me the chance to read the input, go look at the rules again, pick some changes, run them by the others again, etc.

By the first session, I want to have a background for my character that the GM knows, and that fits his background for the world. The alternative is to play Conrad the Wyvern Hunter in a world with no wyverns.

When I run a game, I start by sending an introduction -- 4-6 pages of the kind of background any character would know. [If there are no elves in the world, people need to know not to build an elf character, and not to assume elf friends or rivals, for instance.]

In the game I'm currently playing, after I sent my initial character idea, complete with Ancestral Relic, the DM invented a history for one of my ancestors involving a war of dwarves vs. orcs, to make my idea for my Ancestral Relic work well. Then I slightly adjusted my plans for the Relic to match his history. You can't do that in a single session zero.

But some people want to design a quick character in five minutes. A group of those people don't need the back-and-forth emails that I prefer.

People are different; they like different things; and that's OK.

Pex
2021-10-07, 02:34 PM
Most of the time, and I'm also counting discussing the game online over the week or ten days before Session 1. Personal irony I do not ask the DM what is his DC to climb a tree and similar questions because at this point the rules aren't changing so the DC will be whatever it is. I'll get over it as I can based on the game play as a whole. Session 0 is important for the DM and players to understand each other. I prefer to look at the big picture. I don't want DMs who hate their players by being Killer or Tyrant. I don't want players who hate other players by being That Guy. I enjoy the game, and my desire to play is stronger than any minutiae of annoyances that crop up such as tree climbing DCs. It's a good sign if I can alter my character just a tad after Session 1 because my character isn't working out as I thought because of the DM's style. Happened last week in a new group as the DM allowed me to change a proficiency to Performance because what I wanted to do with my character I thought would fall under Deception, and I want my character to be really good at it.

I do find Session 0 to be important. That's when you work out major issues. It's how I learned to accept Gritty Realism resting in 5E. I hated it on paper, but talking it over with a DM I learned my issue was really about the ratio of long rests per game session. I played his campaign, as a Sorcerer, with Gritty Realism using an acceptable long rest ratio and had a blast.

gijoemike
2021-10-07, 04:33 PM
So I'm asking the playground: In your real life, in person, TTRPGs, do you really have a session zero where the players all come in without completed character sheets, talk to each other about making their characters fit the game & party, the GM lays out the tone & house rules, backstories are swapped & adjusted, and that's pretty much the whole 3-5 hour session?

My last campaign we did exactly this. It was a new system for the players, Star Wars FFG. They knew the system, had the books, and had read the books. But we created characters, did talents, inspiration, backstories, set the tone, went over "interpretations of rules"/house-rules. Took 3 to 4 hours.


But with D&D it will make sure super Chaotic thieves don't wind up in the party with the captain of the guard. Or evil PC with a Paladin in the party. Session 0 is to avoid conflicting character concepts, different tones and expectations. I much prefer allowed books, house rules prior to session 0. I have shown up with 3 characters fleshed out to session 1 only to find out the GM didn't allow ANY of the sources those concepts required. So, I had to scramble to throw something together.

Another time we went straight to session 1 and two different PCs had the exact same name. It was a quick fix but it could have been avoided with a simple info share. That could have been an email.

Pauly
2021-10-07, 06:58 PM
As you define the two, I will say I have never, ever, tried to have a formal session zero and a different formal planning session. I have never seen a need to do so. Rather, call it what you want, I have just talked with the players and/or GMs and we tried to at least be closely aligned on the goals and expectations for both the logistics (I will bring a bag of chips each week) or expectations and game issues (we are all agreeing to play a horror focused campaign this time). :smallsmile:

Only time I’ve ever done a planning session followed by a session zero was with a University gaming group where you had a whole bunch of randos turn up in one week.

Quertus
2021-10-08, 08:32 PM
Another time we went straight to session 1 and two different PCs had the exact same name. It was a quick fix but it could have been avoided with a simple info share. That could have been an email.

3 times I, personally, have run into a naming conflict.

One time, my character had the same name as a Player.

Another time, another PC had my name. And when your name is Rumpelstiltskin, like mine, you really don't expect that.

The third time, my PC had the same name as a major NPC. Kinda like Mordenkainen the Rat.

I can't count how many times that's happened to other players where it didn't involve me personally.

Gnoman
2021-10-08, 09:46 PM
I've never run or played in a major game without some sort of guided character creation that set out clear boundaries and expectations. For players that I've been with before, this is largely about setting the tone, backstory, and setup of the next game, along with a discussion of anything that might rub up against known boundaries.

For new players, it starts as a "here's some chatlogs you can go over to try to get a feel for the style, what are your hard and soft boundaries" thing before going into the above. I've rarely (after getting out of a bit of edgey teenager phase) had issues with players, and those were times when the player didn't realize the event would be an issue.

Bacon Elemental
2021-10-09, 03:58 AM
I feel that "Session zero" is much more important if you have at least 1 player who are system-unfamiliar, or who want to try out a complicated new splat, or even just a group agreed "Hey our characters should be brothers!" and then need to figure out how that's gonna work in person.

But if it's a group who all know each other and all know the system, it becomes a lot easier to just include any caveats in the campaign pitch and then say "The campaign will begin with/at X, make sure I've had a chance to look over your sheet by then"

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-09, 05:56 AM
A thing on this forum is the... fesishization isn't right, but its close... the extremely strong advocacy for a "session zero" to create characters, discuss house rules, and otherwise hash out things about the game and system before starting to play.

However, in actual play I've never seen this happen. The closest I've experienced is Champions games where the GM is explicitly, written in the rule book, supposed to set power levels, vet the characters, and collaborate with the players before the game starts. Outside of that one system I've experienced... call it a sort of passive aggressive hostility towards a "session zero". With a combination of players insinuating that any GM intervention during character creation is some sort of bad "character railroading", and an idea that "session zero" isn't playing the game and therefore wastes a game session.

Interestingly, a GM saying something like "PH +1" which D&D AL uses isn't regarded as interference. On the other hand, this "anti-session zero" is so ingraned in my local gaming culture that most GMs (and all D&D DMs) will not interact with any PC backgrounds provided by the player. On the gripping hand my local gaming culture is definitely into the more crunchy and complex rule sets, seeing many more players coming in from technical backgrounds and things like the Warhammer armies games as opposed to more literary backgrounds and rules light games. That produces a more "rules bound" culture that prefers explicit rules permission for things over more free form "it doesn't say not to" styles.

So I'm asking the playground: In your real life, in person, TTRPGs, do you really have a session zero where the players all come in without completed character sheets, talk to each other about making their characters fit the game & party, the GM lays out the tone & house rules, backstories are swapped & adjusted, and that's pretty much the whole 3-5 hour session?

This is a really interesting post.

In my irl game culture (which is made up of a pool of about ten players so not any kind of significant sample size, bear that in mind) we are very pro session 0. We always do one, and sometimes we will even do a separate session before even session 0 where we play Microscope or do some other process to collaboratively create the setting.

However, that mentality of wanting to resist the GM “railroading character creation” is definitely present as well. When we play D&D we do a session 0 which is ostensibly for character creation, but in practice most players have enough of an investment in the side of D&D that’s about sick character builds that most come to session 0 with their character already created. We do all also care about the storytelling side of it too, so this means most players come with not just the mechanical build sorted out but also the backstory, personality and maybe even some idea of an intended character arc.

I don’t like this. It means that session 0 becomes a weird, stilted process of trying to forcefully fit together a bunch of different elements created in isolation from each other. It doesn’t help that the GM will usually have some idea of “the campaign” figured out in advance too, so the disparate character concepts have to be made to fit not only with each other but with “the campaign” as well.

I’ve introduced Dungeon World as a game we sometimes play (to somewhat mixed reception), and the way DW explicitly works is that you turn up to the first session with nothing and create the characters, and in the process the setting and campaign premise, together, collaboratively in the space of a few hours. This is how I would prefer to play all the time. You don’t have to force anything to make it fit because it’s all being created together in the first place. This leads to a much more satisfying experience of the whole game, for me at least.

So to answer your question, we are very pro session zero but we have a certain set of ideas about RPGs that make our session zeros feel a bit forced and self-defeating.

Quertus
2021-10-09, 07:50 PM
This is a really interesting post.

In my irl game culture (which is made up of a pool of about ten players so not any kind of significant sample size, bear that in mind) we are very pro session 0. We always do one, and sometimes we will even do a separate session before even session 0 where we play Microscope or do some other process to collaboratively create the setting.

However, that mentality of wanting to resist the GM “railroading character creation” is definitely present as well. When we play D&D we do a session 0 which is ostensibly for character creation, but in practice most players have enough of an investment in the side of D&D that’s about sick character builds that most come to session 0 with their character already created. We do all also care about the storytelling side of it too, so this means most players come with not just the mechanical build sorted out but also the backstory, personality and maybe even some idea of an intended character arc.

I don’t like this. It means that session 0 becomes a weird, stilted process of trying to forcefully fit together a bunch of different elements created in isolation from each other. It doesn’t help that the GM will usually have some idea of “the campaign” figured out in advance too, so the disparate character concepts have to be made to fit not only with each other but with “the campaign” as well.

I’ve introduced Dungeon World as a game we sometimes play (to somewhat mixed reception), and the way DW explicitly works is that you turn up to the first session with nothing and create the characters, and in the process the setting and campaign premise, together, collaboratively in the space of a few hours. This is how I would prefer to play all the time. You don’t have to force anything to make it fit because it’s all being created together in the first place. This leads to a much more satisfying experience of the whole game, for me at least.

So to answer your question, we are very pro session zero but we have a certain set of ideas about RPGs that make our session zeros feel a bit forced and self-defeating.

When each person - player and GM - only beings a single element, I agree, it can be difficult to make it work.

However, when each participant brings a portfolio of elements, representative of the range of their capabilities, it is much easier IME to find or design concepts that work well together.

That said, I happen to love the "how do we make this group work?" minigame… but usually in a mechanical, "we didn't bring a cookie cutter" sense, not a Guardians of the Galaxy, "who let a Paladin, an Assassin, an Undead Hunter, and an Undead Master in the same party" sense.

Trafalgar
2021-10-09, 08:36 PM
Long ago, during the dark ages of 2e, I was very trusting DM and didn't require that people roll their characters when I was present. I think at the time, I let you roll 3d6 times 8 and drop the two lowest stats and place them where ever you want. One day, a person I didn't know that well showed up with a fighter with an 18(00) Strength. Which has a probability of 1/21600.

I don't like accusing anyone of lying unless I have proof so I let the 18(00) stand. One of the other players, however, did not have this scruple and accused the fighter of cheating. Let's just say that that group did not last long.

That experience made me a strong proponent of making the majority of rolls in the open so all players can see. So even if there isn't a "formal" session zero, I would want all attribute roles done in a way that was visible to everyone. Like creating a "roll 20" game just for character creation. Most of my 5e campaigns use the standard array so this isn't even a problem.

I have all my house rules written down so I can email it to everyone. Most other elements of character creation can just be a conversation between me and the player.

Jay R
2021-10-09, 09:44 PM
... One day, a person I didn't know that well showed up with a fighter with an 18(00) Strength. Which has a probability of 1/21600.

I don't like accusing anyone of lying or unless I have proof so I let the 18(00) stand. One of the other players, however, did not have this scruple and accused the fighter of cheating. Let's just say that that group did not last long.

I prefer to roll in front of somebody just in case I really do get an 18(00). I want people to know I really rolled it.

Trafalgar
2021-10-09, 11:29 PM
I prefer to roll in front of somebody just in case I really do get an 18(00). I want people to know I really rolled it.

Totally. As a DM, if I roll two 20s for attacks in a row it had better be out in the open. If I did it behind the screen, I might get accused of fudging.

Chauncymancer
2021-10-10, 06:42 AM
I think that part of what drives anti session zero sentiment is that in a session zero you need to achieve a consensus, either by dm authority or by group agreement, that there is one, correct way to play this campaign. That playing outside that scope is quite literally playing the campaign wrong, and that everything players do, from character creation to individual combat actions, needs to show some level of commitment to playing this game "right".
And 50 years of flame wars and snobby pedants have drubbed this idea completely out of about half of all table's imagining. But without it, the session zero is almost toothless.

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-10, 06:48 AM
When each person - player and GM - only beings a single element, I agree, it can be difficult to make it work.

However, when each participant brings a portfolio of elements, representative of the range of their capabilities, it is much easier IME to find or design concepts that work well together.


Interesting. I’m not sure what you mean. What does a portfolio of elements look like compared to a single element? Because a portfolio seems like a pretty accurate description of what I was talking about - PCs with not only the stats, class etc needed to play the game but also a backstory, setting elements, known NPCs etc that would tie them into a setting. I feel like this makes it harder, not easier, to tie things together in a satisfying way because there is that much more stuff to tie together. Have I misunderstood your point?

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-10, 07:13 AM
Rule zero is in a few of the books as well. Stuff that seem obvious to us on a tabletop-oriented forum aren't necessarily so for those breaking into the hobby from scratch, so there's nothing wrong with books that decide to mention this stuff.


One of my biggest gripes is that so few books acknowledge stuff that’s been known and understood for decades, instead leaving it up to old players to relay the knowledge or new players to figure it out on their own.


You two are missing the point. "Rule zero" came about as a witty way to refer to something that was already explained as a proper rule in the books. Same is largely true of "session zero". They don't explain anything new, instead, they are things that need explaining. If you are writing a new game for new players, they have zero place in the rules text, their correct place is in a hobby glossary.

I think these things belong in game rule books. You’re talking about rule zero - “the GM has final say over everything that happens” - as some kind of all-pervasive convention that applies to the entire hobby. But there are games which explicitly tell you this is not the case with them. I think it’s helpful for games to make it clear what the design intent is with regard to this. It doesn’t have to be presented as “a rule”, it can be in the general “what the hell is this?” intro that many RPGs have.

This may be less the case with session zero, but there are still games that give you a specific procedure for getting started, so if the design intent is instead “spend some time hashing out the setting, premise and expectations in whatever way is comfortable for you” then it’s helpful to have that in the text.

The medium is big and varied enough that it’s a bad idea to take things for granted just because they’re common practice in a lot of games and gaming cultures, imo.

Alcore
2021-10-10, 10:01 AM
To have a sit down and discuss session typically means a serious breakdown in communication; we had a month via texts or some such and we failed to have enough to host session 1? We had one job and we failed.


I can understand a session zero at the end of a session if the big bad died early; it’s happened. To have a session devoted to it is a failure to us...

Pex
2021-10-10, 10:13 AM
To have a sit down and discuss session typically means a serious breakdown in communication; we had a month via texts or some such and we failed to have enough to host session 1? We had one job and we failed.


I can understand a session zero at the end of a session if the big bad died early; it’s happened. To have a session devoted to it is a failure to us...

Your month of text communicating is your "Session 0".

Trafalgar
2021-10-10, 12:55 PM
As a DM, I find having all of my house rules in writing replaces a good chunk of session zero. I do like to have a quick chat with each player to find out what they want from the campaign and if there is anything out of the ordinary they want, like a race or subclass from a UA. But that doesn't have to happen in a formal session, I can usually handle it with a phone call.

I also make random assignments of relationships. So I will assign each player a number and have each player roll a die. Let's say player Scott rolls a 2 which is player Sheila's number. Scott and Sheila now have to get together and determine how their characters know each other. At minimum, they need to be acquaintances who, perhaps, worked together before or hang out in the same tavern. They can be friends or family. They can't be enemies. It's completely up to the players. But I find that makes Session 1 go a lot smoother.

None of this needs to be done in person in an actual session, though.

MoiMagnus
2021-10-10, 03:12 PM
I've not really seen that, though in my group it's quite usual for half of the players to not even have started to think about what character they want to play before our first meeting (which could be called "session 0") => this might mean a 30min break early in the session for peoples to think about what they want to play.

If they even know the rules of the RPG we're about to play... which at least one player usually does not.

If the GM even knows what campaign we're about to play... which is not always the case as our usual GM sometimes asks us to vote between 2 or 3 campaigns at the beginning of "session 0". Admittedly, we only did that for online campaigns, where peoples can just log-off and be replaced by another friend at the last minute if they're not interested in the selected campaign.

OldTrees1
2021-10-10, 03:21 PM
I think that part of what drives anti session zero sentiment is that in a session zero you need to achieve a consensus, either by dm authority or by group agreement, that there is one, correct way to play this campaign. That playing outside that scope is quite literally playing the campaign wrong, and that everything players do, from character creation to individual combat actions, needs to show some level of commitment to playing this game "right".
And 50 years of flame wars and snobby pedants have drubbed this idea completely out of about half of all table's imagining. But without it, the session zero is almost toothless.

Does a Session Zero need teeth?

For example, Tanarii (Motivational Alignment) and I (Descriptive Alignment) have dramatically different views on Alignment. If we were both players in the same campaign we might have different expectations for alignment. We could let the group be aware of those different expectations (no one correct way to play this campaign) and the GM could have alignment interface with our characters differently.

Even if the GM did not figure out that trivial solution, they would be made aware of the difference, and both Tanarii and myself would be made aware of the difference. That lays the groundwork for letting there be more than one correct way to play this campaign.

I don't think Session Zero needs teeth. I think it needs tongues and ears.

Quertus
2021-10-16, 08:54 PM
Long ago, during the dark ages of 2e, I was very trusting DM and didn't require that people roll their characters when I was present. I think at the time, I let you roll 3d6 times 8 and drop the two lowest stats and place them where ever you want. One day, a person I didn't know that well showed up with a fighter with an 18(00) Strength. Which has a probability of 1/21600.

I don't like accusing anyone of lying unless I have proof so I let the 18(00) stand. One of the other players, however, did not have this scruple and accused the fighter of cheating. Let's just say that that group did not last long.

That experience made me a strong proponent of making the majority of rolls in the open so all players can see. So even if there isn't a "formal" session zero, I would want all attribute roles done in a way that was visible to everyone. Like creating a "roll 20" game just for character creation. Most of my 5e campaigns use the standard array so this isn't even a problem.

I have all my house rules written down so I can email it to everyone. Most other elements of character creation can just be a conversation between me and the player.


I prefer to roll in front of somebody just in case I really do get an 18(00). I want people to know I really rolled it.

Long ago, I had possibly the only (darn senility) "create characters as a group" session I've had. 2e. I had a Fighter (Gish (sort of)), with an 18 Strength. Rolled a 99. Totally psyched! Went to tell my neighbor, happened to spot the 18 on their character sheet. Paraphrased (it's been almost 30 years):

Me: "You playing a Fighter?"

Him: yeah, why?

Me: roll this.

He proceeds to roll a 100.

Him: is that good?

Me: yes, a 100 is good.

GM: I did not just hear that someone has an 18(100).

Now, we weren't using 3d6, so an 18 wasn't unreasonable, but the GM really wasn't expecting 18(100)&18(99) in the party.


Interesting. I’m not sure what you mean. What does a portfolio of elements look like compared to a single element? Because a portfolio seems like a pretty accurate description of what I was talking about - PCs with not only the stats, class etc needed to play the game but also a backstory, setting elements, known NPCs etc that would tie them into a setting. I feel like this makes it harder, not easier, to tie things together in a satisfying way because there is that much more stuff to tie together. Have I misunderstood your point?

By "portfolio", I mean bringing more than one option to the table.

Maybe Quertus (my signature academia mage for whom this account is named) isn't suited to your murder mystery (by virtue of being too good at solving murder mysteries). Maybe Armus isn't suited to your challenge of riddles (by virtue of being too good at riddles). Maybe Cendur isn't suited to your pants-on-head game (by virtue of, you guessed it, being too good at wearing his pants on his head (and I'm really starting to question the wisdom of this technique for disqualifying characters)). But if we all bring multiple options, to show the extent of what we can do - a portfolio of our range - we can make an informed decision regarding what combination of characters and adventures might be really fun.

Maybe that answer is Colonel Mustard in the space station with the garden gnome. Maybe that answer is Quertus Hears a Cthulhu. Maybe that answer is Monster ♥s Armus vs van Helsing.

But we're more likely to find a combination that works if everyone brings more than one option to the table.

To continue your line of thought, the degree of confidence we can have in our decision is directly propositional to - or at least increased by - the extent to which the character is a known quantity.

So, to pick characters I've probably (darn senility) never mentioned before, to help illustrate this concept, can you guess which of Victor, Survivor, VSH, Brother Smudge, the Engineer, or Rita would be most likely to fit into your most recent game, with no information on who they are?


I think that part of what drives anti session zero sentiment is that in a session zero you need to achieve a consensus, either by dm authority or by group agreement, that there is one, correct way to play this campaign. That playing outside that scope is quite literally playing the campaign wrong, and that everything players do, from character creation to individual combat actions, needs to show some level of commitment to playing this game "right".
And 50 years of flame wars and snobby pedants have drubbed this idea completely out of about half of all table's imagining. But without it, the session zero is almost toothless.

"This is a role-playing game - if (even) your combat decisions aren't in character, aren't driven by 'WWQD', you're doing it wrong."

I'm… not seeing where anything stops me from declaring that in session 0. Playground, am I wrong? Would y'all dust off your (verbal) clue-by-fours if my players complained that I made such a declaration in session 0?


As a DM, I find having all of my house rules in writing replaces a good chunk of session zero. I do like to have a quick chat with each player to find out what they want from the campaign and if there is anything out of the ordinary they want, like a race or subclass from a UA. But that doesn't have to happen in a formal session, I can usually handle it with a phone call.

I also make random assignments of relationships. So I will assign each player a number and have each player roll a die. Let's say player Scott rolls a 2 which is player Sheila's number. Scott and Sheila now have to get together and determine how their characters know each other. At minimum, they need to be acquaintances who, perhaps, worked together before or hang out in the same tavern. They can be friends or family. They can't be enemies. It's completely up to the players. But I find that makes Session 1 go a lot smoother.

None of this needs to be done in person in an actual session, though.

"So, we've decided how we know each other: we worked together, secretly killed off all the gods, replaced then with our puppets, then incarnated as the characters we intended to bring on this adventure: two strangers who don't know each other, but will become acquainted over the course of this adventure. Sounds fair?"

(I have a very strong preference for relationships actually forged during the game; prefab relationships invariably feel artificial by comparison IME - and, often, cause games to fall apart.)

zinycor
2021-10-16, 08:59 PM
Yeah, I always do session 0, helps to have the group meet each other, and set my limits (Which I have many) also I use the X card so having everyone learn about those is nice.

Also, I go over my style of Gming and I teach whoever isn't very knowledgable about the game.

dafrca
2021-10-16, 09:12 PM
Yeah, I always do session 0, helps to have the group meet each other, ....
Just curious, do you play a lot of games where the players don't already know each other?

I am asking as a serious question. Other than one-off games at conventions I have not played very many games where the players didn't already know each other. Yes a few new joiners once in a while but almost never timed just right to be in a session zero per say.

So yes, I am being curious. :smallsmile:

zinycor
2021-10-16, 09:25 PM
Just curious, do you play a lot of games where the players don't already know each other?

I am asking as a serious question. Other than one-off games at conventions I have not played very many games where the players didn't already know each other. Yes a few new joiners once in a while but almost never timed just right to be in a session zero per say.

So yes, I am being curious. :smallsmile:

Yeah, Since the pandemic I really got into playing through discord so I have lots of games where most players don't know each other.

dafrca
2021-10-16, 11:35 PM
Yeah, Since the pandemic I really got into playing through discord so I have lots of games where most players don't know each other.

Interesting, I bet that is a double edged sword. I can see it would be fun having different folks and thus different ideas and characters, but I imagine it also could bring lots of different issues as well.

I can see where a session zero would be more important in those kinds of situations. :smallsmile:

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-17, 04:39 AM
By "portfolio", I mean bringing more than one option to the table.

Maybe Quertus (my signature academia mage for whom this account is named) isn't suited to your murder mystery (by virtue of being too good at solving murder mysteries). Maybe Armus isn't suited to your challenge of riddles (by virtue of being too good at riddles). Maybe Cendur isn't suited to your pants-on-head game (by virtue of, you guessed it, being too good at wearing his pants on his head (and I'm really starting to question the wisdom of this technique for disqualifying characters)). But if we all bring multiple options, to show the extent of what we can do - a portfolio of our range - we can make an informed decision regarding what combination of characters and adventures might be really fun.

Maybe that answer is Colonel Mustard in the space station with the garden gnome. Maybe that answer is Quertus Hears a Cthulhu. Maybe that answer is Monster ♥s Armus vs van Helsing.

But we're more likely to find a combination that works if everyone brings more than one option to the table.

To continue your line of thought, the degree of confidence we can have in our decision is directly propositional to - or at least increased by - the extent to which the character is a known quantity.

So, to pick characters I've probably (darn senility) never mentioned before, to help illustrate this concept, can you guess which of Victor, Survivor, VSH, Brother Smudge, the Engineer, or Rita would be most likely to fit into your most recent game, with no information on who they are?





Ah ok, gotcha. So yeah, if the GM already has a campaign planned then it’s better to bring a bunch of characters and choose the most appropriate one than to bring one character, for sure.

But as I said, in my ideal session zero the group is working together to determine what the campaign is even going to be. So rather than fit a character (whether it’s your only one or picked from a pool) to a campaign concept that already exists, you’re tailor-making a character for a campaign concept that you and the group are creating collaboratively. In fact, ideally, each player thinks of their character as part of the campaign concept. The whole group is working on one big creative project together.

So I can’t guess which of your characters would be the best fit for my most recent game. But if you were to play in my next game (in the style I like) I could guarantee you that your character would fit that one, because you’d be custom making the character for the campaign and we’d be custom making the campaign together.

Telok
2021-10-17, 03:07 PM
But as I said, in my ideal session zero the group is working together to determine what the campaign is even going to be. So rather than fit a character (whether it’s your only one or picked from a pool) to a campaign concept that already exists, you’re tailor-making a character for a campaign concept that you and the group are creating collaboratively. In fact, ideally, each player thinks of their character as part of the campaign concept. The whole group is working on one big creative project together.

Question: how does that work if the DM is running a sandbox with just a couple short intro hook adventures prepped?

That's the way I tend to run games. Some form of sandbox, certain npcs moving some long term plans along that will effect a series of changes likely to pick up the party somewhere along the way, and usually a person/group or two in need of expendable/deniable assets with contacts in likely adventuring party areas. Then build a couple or four short short intro adventures to accomidate a variety of party/pc types.

Reversefigure4
2021-10-17, 03:38 PM
Question: how does that work if the DM is running a sandbox with just a couple short intro hook adventures prepped?

That's the way I tend to run games. Some form of sandbox, certain npcs moving some long term plans along that will effect a series of changes likely to pick up the party somewhere along the way, and usually a person/group or two in need of expendable/deniable assets with contacts in likely adventuring party areas. Then build a couple or four short short intro adventures to accomidate a variety of party/pc types.

Well, you don't need to do a lot to fit a basic DM hook of "Adventurers wanted"... Although it still disqualifies several characters concepts, like "Wookie", "CR17 dragon", and "Wants to earn enough to buy back his father's 200gp farm then retire".

AND you still need the players on the same page, because a group of characters who are Kleptomaniac Rogue, LG Paladin, Necromancer who wants to harvest pretty dead women, and Chef Bob are all going to want to take different hooks and don't have a lot of reason or cohesion to work together. Even an initial hook that links them "You're all shipwrecked together!" won't hold up into adventure 2.

Telok
2021-10-17, 06:12 PM
Well, you don't need to do a lot to fit a basic DM hook of "Adventurers wanted"... Although it still disqualifies several characters concepts, like "Wookie", "CR17 dragon", and...

Um, not what I was asking about. I was asking about HidesHisEyes thing of trying to tailor make a group to the campaign when there isn't a planned/plotted campaign.

Also, "disqualifies character concepts" is dependent on the system. I've played games where the party was a blind acrobat, d&d dragon, drunk werewolf, and psychic cowgirl. It worked fine. Maybe D&D can't handle that, but disparate character concepts isn't a big issue in most of my games.

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-17, 06:36 PM
Question: how does that work if the DM is running a sandbox with just a couple short intro hook adventures prepped?

That's the way I tend to run games. Some form of sandbox, certain npcs moving some long term plans along that will effect a series of changes likely to pick up the party somewhere along the way, and usually a person/group or two in need of expendable/deniable assets with contacts in likely adventuring party areas. Then build a couple or four short short intro adventures to accomidate a variety of party/pc types.

Yeah so the way I run a game once it gets going probably isn’t hugely different from what you do. But the way I like to set that up, ideally, is with everyone at the table working collaboratively. Then those potential quest-givers can be characters from the PCs’ backstories or at least people or groups suggested by what we came up with together. It’s not that we decide in session zero to do a campaign about a specific thing - as I’ve said and I probably sound like a stuck record by now, I don’t want to have any idea what specific sequence of events is going to happen. I just want to start from a base line - comprising a setting and player characters - that we all sat down and worked on together.

dafrca
2021-10-17, 07:27 PM
I've played games where the party was a blind acrobat, d&d dragon, drunk werewolf, and psychic cowgirl. It worked fine.
Bad enough as a GM having to deal with a party like that, but then you realize that is the party that you will be GMing for in your Solo game.... LOL

:smallsmile:

Telok
2021-10-17, 08:22 PM
It’s not that we decide in session zero to do a campaign about a specific thing - as I’ve said and I probably sound like a stuck record by now, I don’t want to have any idea what specific sequence of events is going to happen. I just want to start from a base line - comprising a setting and player characters - that we all sat down and worked on together.

So really just chargen and attaching characters to the setting for the first mission then? Ok, that makes more sense.


Bad enough as a GM having to deal with a party like that, but then you realize that is the party that you will be GMing for in your Solo game.... LOL

:smallsmile:

Why would it be a bad party to DM? All the point buy supers games are designed to deal with that sort of stuff, and they've been chugging along for decades selling books and having successful campaigns. Even hoary old AD&D had the infamous "young balrog" thing going. Sure D&D 3+ which gave us "angel summoner vs bmx bandit" may not cope well, but those games are pretty intentionally designed for 3-5 humans (rubber ears optional) fighting 1-10 random monsters and not much else.

dafrca
2021-10-17, 11:24 PM
Why would it be a bad party to DM?
I didn't say it was a bad party, I think it would be a lot of extra details to deal with though with such an interesting and crazy mix. And the joke (yes my post was an attempt at a joke and failed as it might have been) is that if played in a solo game you are all five. The four characters and the GM.

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-18, 12:19 AM
So really just chargen and attaching characters to the setting for the first mission then? Ok, that makes more sense.

Well, and creating the setting.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-18, 08:22 AM
So I'm asking the playground: In your real life, in person, TTRPGs, do you really have a session zero where the players all come in without completed character sheets, talk to each other about making their characters fit the game & party, the GM lays out the tone & house rules, backstories are swapped & adjusted, and that's pretty much the whole 3-5 hour session? First off you are making some unwarranted assumptions about session zero, which will vary in form, but explicitly, the "show up without a character sheet." Who requires that?
As OldTrees1 pointed out:

It is okay for a Session 0 to conclude in time to start Session 1 on the same day.
But the bolded part (emphasis mine) isn't necessary.
In the electronic age, there is a hell of a lot of "session zero" style activity that can be done by email, text, discord/VTT/Chat or even a *gasp* internet forum like GiTP. :smallbiggrin: But that's with players who have played before.

For a group of totally new players, walking people through Char Gen is a best practice.
For any group of players, Making Sure that Their PCs fit the DM/GMs game world is a best practice.

As to your bit about player attitudes that you brought up.

Bottom Line: you can bring me a back story but if it doesn't fit the world that I am GMing we will sit down, the player and I, and massage it (keeping as much as we can) so that it does fit the world I am running.

If that bugs you, and you consider that DM/GM 'Interference' then my line is very simple: "You need to find another GM, and I am glad we found this out before we, as a group, started play that you are unwilling to work with me."
I am volunteering my time, and my fun matters too.
I don't need someone taking a Player Versus DM stance before we even began the first adventure.

As a player, I am eager to make my character fit into the DMs/GMs world. I ask a lot of questions about the world, the setting, other stuff, before I make a PC for any game since I want to feel as though the character belongs in that alternate reality.

When I play in real life, I usually: {snip list}
Is this an a-typical way to create a campaign? Yes but I find it is very helpful in getting the players to buy into the concept and make characters that suit the needs of the pitch. *golf clap* That's a keep in my "good ideas" folder.

I'm presuming that a lot of the contention around the idea isn't about the idea, but rather the terminology being used as something of a shibboleth. A Shibboleth is a CR 11 Creature that does psychic damage during social encounters. It is usually found with its pet, a The-Saurus, which uses words as weapons. :smallyuk:

Yes. Session 0 is like the pirate code, a guideline more as a harden rule. This pirate playing person agrees.

I do find Session 0 to be important. That's when you work out major issues. It's how I learned to accept Gritty Realism resting in 5E. I hated it on paper, but talking it over with a DM I learned my issue was really about the ratio of long rests per game session. I played his campaign, as a Sorcerer, with Gritty Realism using an acceptable long rest ratio and had a blast. I see what you did there. :smallbiggrin:

I prefer to roll in front of somebody just in case I really do get an 18(00). I want people to know I really rolled it. Me too. (Best I ever got was an 18(98) and I was so stoked!

Now, we weren't using 3d6, so an 18 wasn't unreasonable, but the GM really wasn't expecting 18(100)&18(99) in the party. Did you name them Hanz and Franz? :smallconfused:

(I have a very strong preference for relationships actually forged during the game; prefab relationships invariably feel artificial by comparison IME - and, often, cause games to fall apart.) I've experienced the same.

Just curious, do you play a lot of games where the players don't already know each other? Yes.
I am DMing for a game where I met the group as a stranger on the internet. Four years later, we (well, me and three others) are still playing together and I brought in two others whom I'd not met other than sharing stuff on line through RPGSE.
I am a player in a game where I had met nobody. PhoenixPhyre is our DM.
The other Game I play/DM in is my brother's world; I've know all of them forever.
Another game I play in Max Wilson (of GiTP) has been Dming (play by post) and two other playgrounders still remain after RL took a couple of the others away from us.

I am asking as a serious question. Other than one-off games at conventions I have not played very many games where the players didn't already know each other.
Lucky you. :smallsmile:
On the bright side, I have made some new friends. :smallsmile:

kyoryu
2021-10-18, 09:02 AM
A Shibboleth is a CR 11 Creature that does psychic damage during social encounters. It is usually found with its pet, a The-Saurus, which uses words as weapons. :smallyuk:


Well, I thought that was a common term, but the point is that it's a verbal indicator of belonging to a certain group - the word "shibboleth" itself has two different pronunciations, which can indicate which of several groups a person belongs to.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-18, 09:06 AM
Well, I thought that was a common term, It is, I was making a joke.
:smallbiggrin:
And I actually did run into a thesaurus monster in a D&D game in 1981. Forget which magazine it was from (might have been an RPGSA module or something from White Dwarf) but a thesaurus was a threat to the party because when we ran into it it would shout a word at us, and if we did not shout back a synonym, we took damage. I think I may have a copy of that somewhere in a file, not sure.
The DM loved that little encounter, the players mostly rolled their eyes until it was over ... :smallcool:

kyoryu
2021-10-18, 09:10 AM
It is, I was making a joke.

Ah, cool! Couldn't tell if it was that or "nice using big word that people won't understand" so I decided to err on the side of clarity :)

dafrca
2021-10-18, 10:19 AM
Lucky you. :smallsmile:
On the bright side, I have made some new friends. :smallsmile:
Yes, I can see that would be one of the largest benefits to playing in new groups where not everyone knows each other. So I am unsure which of us is luckier. :smallsmile:

Eldan
2021-10-18, 12:18 PM
Um, not what I was asking about. I was asking about HidesHisEyes thing of trying to tailor make a group to the campaign when there isn't a planned/plotted campaign.

Also, "disqualifies character concepts" is dependent on the system. I've played games where the party was a blind acrobat, d&d dragon, drunk werewolf, and psychic cowgirl. It worked fine. Maybe D&D can't handle that, but disparate character concepts isn't a big issue in most of my games.

We kind of that that, recently. The DM basically said "This will be set in *wild lawless mountain area* and it's going to be sandboxy" and the party came up with the idea that they were the third son of a noble family out to make his fortune and his retinue, consisting his old tutor who came along to chronicle his deeds, his sister who was running away from an engagement and also wanted to practise her magic without social stigma and a locally hired ranger guide.

I consider that a tailor-made party for the plothook.

Quertus
2021-10-21, 04:16 PM
Ah ok, gotcha. So yeah, if the GM already has a campaign planned then it’s better to bring a bunch of characters and choose the most appropriate one than to bring one character, for sure.

But as I said, in my ideal session zero the group is working together to determine what the campaign is even going to be. So rather than fit a character (whether it’s your only one or picked from a pool) to a campaign concept that already exists, you’re tailor-making a character for a campaign concept that you and the group are creating collaboratively. In fact, ideally, each player thinks of their character as part of the campaign concept. The whole group is working on one big creative project together.

So I can’t guess which of your characters would be the best fit for my most recent game. But if you were to play in my next game (in the style I like) I could guarantee you that your character would fit that one, because you’d be custom making the character for the campaign and we’d be custom making the campaign together.


Yeah so the way I run a game once it gets going probably isn’t hugely different from what you do. But the way I like to set that up, ideally, is with everyone at the table working collaboratively. Then those potential quest-givers can be characters from the PCs’ backstories or at least people or groups suggested by what we came up with together. It’s not that we decide in session zero to do a campaign about a specific thing - as I’ve said and I probably sound like a stuck record by now, I don’t want to have any idea what specific sequence of events is going to happen. I just want to start from a base line - comprising a setting and player characters - that we all sat down and worked on together.


Well, and creating the setting.

I find your overconfidence disturbing. :smallwink:

There's clearly some business principles i need to teach you. unfortunately, I don't have fancy names or cool stories for the most relevant concepts, so you're stuck learning about stretch goals.

Basically, there's things which are well within your reach, and things that you maybe could do, if you stretch - with hard work, and a little luck, they could happen.

Well, I worked for a company dumb enough to teach the term, then promise shareholders something along a timeline that required every department to reach stretch goals.

Can you guess how that turned out? Even one department falling means that the project fails. Nearly every department failed.

For me, "creating a character I'll enjoy" is a stretch goal. My track record says that, statistically, I'll need to roll a "20" to get an acceptable character.

So… maybe the character workshopped together would actually fit (senility willing, maybe I'll add my classic commentary about just how well that actually works in practice with new characters). But, odds are, even if they do, they won't be worth playing.

Also… the GM needn't have "one campaign planned" for bringing a portfolio of characters to be useful.

Heck, everyone could bring just one character each, and the GM bring a portfolio of possible adventures, or even adventure seeds, and it still be a "portfolio" scenario (even if, generally speaking, a suboptimal use of this tech (although "existing party, GM just died / moved" could produce a valid reason to expect that might work)).


Bottom Line: you can bring me a back story but if it doesn't fit the world that I am GMing we will sit down, the player and I, and massage it (keeping as much as we can) so that it does fit the world I am running.

If that bugs you, and you consider that DM/GM 'Interference' then my line is very simple: "You need to find another GM, and I am glad we found this out before we, as a group, started play that you are unwilling to work with me."
I am volunteering my time, and my fun matters too.
I don't need someone taking a Player Versus DM stance before we even began the first adventure.

Did you name them Hanz and Franz? :smallconfused:
I've experienced the same.

No, not Hans and Frans, although I cannot say offhand what their names were (darn senility).

I find your other ideas disturbing.

I've yet to have a GM "help" that didn't ruin the character (that I recall - darn senility).

Would you, as GM, accept my help changing ("massaging") your world to make the character fit?

Why do you view this as "player vs GM"? That's… a really odd take on this behavior, and *not* something I've seen as a motivation for such behavior in my 4 decades of play.

If you've experienced how artificial "pregenerated" relationships often feel… do you massage the character into the world, just to never run any of those background NPCs? That seems… an odd use of time for someone seemingly concerned about their temporal investment.

All that said… I used to try to help people "massage" their character concepts into my more developed worlds. As I never had the combination of "as picky and detail-oriented as me" and "me running their background acquaintances upon whom they've hung their personality defining moments", I'll claim it wasn't a parallel to my horror stories of GMs attempting the same. But it still (if I read them correctly - nobody ever said anything (that I remember - darn senility)) occasionally threw some of my players, when they learned details of organizations that they thought they knew.

So, personally, I don't really do that anymore.

My developed worlds are for me to make my PCs, and others to Explore as outsiders. My less developed worlds are for others to build characters in, and Explore. And if they need to build things for their backstories in one of my less developed worlds, well, they can. Because the world's big enough to accommodate anything any of my players have ever needed.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-21, 05:19 PM
No, not Hans and Frans, although I cannot say offhand what their names were (darn senility). Too bad, but not everyone is an SNL fan.

I find your other ideas disturbing. In the words of Sgt Helka: Lighten up, Francis. :smallwink:

I've yet to have a GM "help" that didn't ruin the character (that I recall - darn senility).
My experience and yours do not match. I've had good luck working with a DM or a GM to get my character to fit their world. (in fact, it was necessary for me to consult with the GM when we played Fellowship a couple of years ago, a Dungeon World thing, since I was not comfortable with the lack of initial input. Thanks to our collaborative efforts the experience went quite well. It made my experiences better.
Would you, as GM, accept my help changing ("massaging") your world to make the character fit?
Depends.
Propose a change, and I'll consider it. It's a process of dialogue.
I 've had great input from some players, and garbage input from other players.
I take what I like and I discard the rest. The worldbuilder gets to do that.

Why do you view this as "player vs GM"? Because it is.

If you've experienced how artificial "pregenerated" relationships often feel… do you massage the character into the world, just to never run any of those background NPCs? That seems… an odd use of time for someone seemingly concerned about their temporal investment. Word salad needs dressing. By the way, that bolded part is you making stuff up that I didn't write.

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-21, 07:56 PM
I find your overconfidence disturbing. :smallwink:

There's clearly some business principles i need to teach you.



Erm, I think I’m good actually…





unfortunately, I don't have fancy names or cool stories for the most relevant concepts, so you're stuck learning about stretch goals.

Basically, there's things which are well within your reach, and things that you maybe could do, if you stretch - with hard work, and a little luck, they could happen.

Well, I worked for a company dumb enough to teach the term, then promise shareholders something along a timeline that required every department to reach stretch goals.

Can you guess how that turned out? Even one department falling means that the project fails. Nearly every department failed.

For me, "creating a character I'll enjoy" is a stretch goal. My track record says that, statistically, I'll need to roll a "20" to get an acceptable character.

So… maybe the character workshopped together would actually fit (senility willing, maybe I'll add my classic commentary about just how well that actually works in practice with new characters). But, odds are, even if they do, they won't be worth playing.



Well ok, if that’s been your experience fair enough. But it sounds like you’re assuming that my earlier posts were pure theorycrafting, since you seem to want to set me straight on how it works in practice. Trouble is, they were based on experience. It does work, for me. I’ve done it, it’s my preferred play style.

What I’m mainly confused about is the idea that you have some kind of standard for a good player character, which has to be met when you make the character (and apparently is only met 1 in 20 times ??? Have I misunderstood that part?) in order for the campaign to be a success. Am I reading you wrong? If not, can you describe the standard your character has to meet in order to be “worth playing”?

Because to me a character is worth playing almost by definition, as long as it fits with what the rest of the group is doing. That really is the only standard. Hashing out what the game is going to be, and making characters together as part of that process, makes it easy to meet that standard.




Also… the GM needn't have "one campaign planned" for bringing a portfolio of characters to be useful.

Heck, everyone could bring just one character each, and the GM bring a portfolio of possible adventures, or even adventure seeds, and it still be a "portfolio" scenario (even if, generally speaking, a suboptimal use of this tech (although "existing party, GM just died / moved" could produce a valid reason to expect that might work)).

Yeah I wasn’t suggesting that the portfolio of characters thing is only useful if the GM has one campaign planned, I meant the portfolio suggestion sounds like it assumes the GM has something planned (one campaign or a portfolio of possibilities) before you get as far as character creation. In what I’m describing, both players and GM skip the portfolio stage and go from “nothing” to “everything we need to start the campaign” in one night. (Essentially anyway. In reality people do generally bring some ideas to the table and that’s fine, what’s important is that no one brings a complete piece of the campaign and demands that it be fitted in wholesale.)

I hope I’m not coming off as hostile. If the approach I’m describing sounds bad to you that’s cool, but I promise you it can work, it’s not something I’ve just dreamed up.

Satinavian
2021-10-22, 02:31 AM
For me, "creating a character I'll enjoy" is a stretch goal. My track record says that, statistically, I'll need to roll a "20" to get an acceptable character.
If you only enjoy playing about 5% of characters you are making, something about your character creation process is seriously messed up.


I've yet to have a GM "help" that didn't ruin the character (that I recall - darn senility).

Would you, as GM, accept my help changing ("massaging") your world to make the character fit?Generally yes, that des happen. If one wants to be a noble, there needs to be a noble family they come from etc. "Making the character fit" generally does include small changes to the world as well as to the character. And there should be no unilateral changes. The GM doesn't change the character against the players wishes and the player doesn't introduce new elements into the world the GM is against. But if that is not enough to make the character fit, they can't be played.


My developed worlds are for me to make my PCs, and others to Explore as outsiders. My less developed worlds are for others to build characters in, and Explore. And if they need to build things for their backstories in one of my less developed worlds, well, they can. Because the world's big enough to accommodate anything any of my players have ever needed.In not one of the campaigns i have run the last decade i would have accepted such alien PCs that care only really about a world beyond the scope of the game where they come from. I am explicitel not interested in your characters coming from your developed worlds and treating the campaign setting we are using as if they were tourists.

I probably would have demanded that you make new PCs grounded in this world or find a different group as well. You could make a local clone that is similar. You could (in most cases) make someone from a far of land who lacks local knowledge(Even theme groups can often allow one exotic stranger). But not some real outsider with all the baggage from some completely other setting i don't know.



I am not against everyone bringing an ensemble of existing ones and we choose which character fits best. But i do that onl if all those characters are explicitely part of the same setting. Which usually means using official settings and not changing them much.

Lousifer
2021-10-22, 08:40 PM
It's weird. I am generally very pro session zero, but the group that I have gamed with recently who spent the most time doing 'session-zero' type things - communicating about what important party role gaps needed to be filled/etc was the most dysfunctional table I have played at in years.

Our player who chose to play the party leader didn't want to lead, few of the PCs shared their S0 story hooks with the party, several people were obviously multitasking through the whole campaign, the GM set an expectation of a high-op table and 3 of the 6 players had no more than a passing familiarity with the game rules, and the GM struggled both with virtual tabletop and with the game systems. The campaign definitely soured me on trying to game with new people and on session zero.

dafrca
2021-10-22, 09:42 PM
It's weird. I am generally very pro session zero, but the group that I have gamed with recently who spent the most time doing 'session-zero' type things - communicating about what important party role gaps needed to be filled/etc was the most dysfunctional table I have played at in years.

Our player who chose to play the party leader didn't want to lead, few of the PCs shared their S0 story hooks with the party, several people were obviously multitasking through the whole campaign, the GM set an expectation of a high-op table and 3 of the 6 players had no more than a passing familiarity with the game rules, and the GM struggled both with virtual tabletop and with the game systems. The campaign definitely soured me on trying to game with new people and on session zero.

And this is why I think about half the threads in this section are really situational. A good GM, a good group of players, and the game works somehow regardless of the rule set or house rules. But a GM who struggles or a group of players who seem to not want to be there are do not care about the game and you could be playing the best rule set in the best module and it will still fail and suck.

The human factor is key to any real RPG session/campaign being a success or failure. :smallsmile:

Quertus
2021-10-23, 06:50 AM
Too bad, but not everyone is an SNL fan.

Perhaps I should clarify: a) decidedly not related, so wouldn't have worked; b) "Hans and Frans" were already taken (player wasn't in that game, but they were brother "god of the hill people" in previous a Supers game).


Depends.
Propose a change, and I'll consider it. It's a process of dialogue.
I 've had great input from some players, and garbage input from other players.
I take what I like and I discard the rest. The worldbuilder gets to do that.

Does the character builder get the same consideration, to take what they like, and discard the rest? To tell you that your idea is garbage?


Because it is.

Although I suppose this literally is in the form of an answer to the question I asked, it is not terribly helpful. So let's try again. In what way, in your opinion, is rejecting the GM changing a character "player vs GM"?

While we're at it, in what way, in your opinion, is or is not the GM rejecting player changes to the world "player vs GM"?


Well ok, if that’s been your experience fair enough. But it sounds like you’re assuming that my earlier posts were pure theorycrafting, since you seem to want to set me straight on how it works in practice. Trouble is, they were based on experience. It does work, for me. I’ve done it, it’s my preferred play style.

Lol. So, I started talking about my characters by name because when i just said, "you can", people would tell me it's impossible. Time and again, I was told my experiences were impossible, and I'd have to clarify, "no, I've done it". So I started saying, "I played Armus, who…". Which got confusing when I started talking about Quertus. Which is why "Quertus my signature academia mage for whom this account is named" is now something of a Playground meme / drinking game.

Point is, no, actually, I figured/knew that you were talking from experience. I wasn't trying to discount your experience, only explain why/how your techniques might not be compatible with me. I was trying to give you the background in business to understand me, not to try to change your understanding of you (except in relation to "not everyone is you" and "your experiences may not translate to everyone").

Clear as mud?


What I’m mainly confused about is the idea that you have some kind of standard for a good player character, which has to be met when you make the character (and apparently is only met 1 in 20 times ??? Have I misunderstood that part?) in order for the campaign to be a success. Am I reading you wrong? If not, can you describe the standard your character has to meet in order to be “worth playing”?


Because to me a character is worth playing almost by definition, as long as it fits with what the rest of the group is doing. That really is the only standard. Hashing out what the game is going to be, and making characters together as part of that process, makes it easy to meet that standard.

Hmmm… this might be tricky to explain.

First: yes, you read right. About 1 in 20 characters I make is worth playing. (In part because I chase stretch goals.)

OK, imagine I tried to craft the personalities (and backstories and…) of Darth Vader, Palatine, Tarkin, Jaba, Luke, Han, Leia, Chewy, R2, Padme, Rex, Qui-Gon, Yoda, Mace, and Jar Jar. (In a universe where Star Wars didn't exist)

The group hates Anakin (stop PKing!) and Jar Jar (because Jar Jar).

I find I just can't pull off Han's wit or Tarkin's ruthlessness the way I want to.

R2 and Chewy are just annoying to play, because they need a translator.

About half of them, I didn't build right, and had to try again.

A lot of them, I just don't enjoy playing the character (I could built a perfect Padme, and find I don't enjoy the "politics and pretend" game).

Like a bad Scrabble setup, many of them just don't have proper personalities to hang things like "cool scenes" or "character growth" off of.

In the end, after trying them all (some of them twice), maybe I find that Yoda is the only character there that I enjoy playing, and is actually worth my time to play.

(Although it probably wouldn't be Yoda, because i don't know his backstory, I don't understand the why behind his actions.)

And… that probably wasn't as helpful as I intended, because it's… looking at the problem from a suboptimal angle. But maybe you at least get a feel for the shape of this piece of the elephant?


Yeah I wasn’t suggesting that the portfolio of characters thing is only useful if the GM has one campaign planned, I meant the portfolio suggestion sounds like it assumes the GM has something planned (one campaign or a portfolio of possibilities) before you get as far as character creation. In what I’m describing, both players and GM skip the portfolio stage and go from “nothing” to “everything we need to start the campaign” in one night. (Essentially anyway. In reality people do generally bring some ideas to the table and that’s fine, what’s important is that no one brings a complete piece of the campaign and demands that it be fitted in wholesale.)

I… seem to live in my own Bizarro World, where everyone is allergic to communication. "Building everything from scratch" is how we got the party of the Paladin the Assassin the Undead Hunter and his childhood friend the Undead Master (and my character).

I can use a clue-by-four to perform enough percussive maintenance to get people to talk meaningfully about nice, solid, already existing pieces.

But what you're describing is, for my groups, a pipe dream, since it would involve everyone rolling a "20" on communication simultaneously for it to work. Or, more like a "pipe nightmare", given that my talents and proclivities mean I'd hate my character 19 times out of 20.

But, at least now, I see what you mean, where you're actually drawing that line.


I hope I’m not coming off as hostile. If the approach I’m describing sounds bad to you that’s cool, but I promise you it can work, it’s not something I’ve just dreamed up.

Nah, you're fine, I'm the one coming off like a ****; happily, you're responding to my content rather than my poor delivery. :smallbiggrin:

This piece:



So I can’t guess which of your characters would be the best fit for my most recent game. But if you were to play in my next game (in the style I like) I could guarantee you that your character would fit that one, because you’d be custom making the character for the campaign and we’d be custom making the campaign together.

I guess I wanted to ensure you understood that "guaranteed to fit" and "fit to play" were not synonyms.

Which, good thing, because it looks like "not fit to play" is a novel concept for you.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-23, 07:06 AM
Does the character builder get the same consideration, to take what they like, and discard the rest? To tell you that your idea is garbage? They can always choose to play in a different world if they have your attitude about this. My experience trumps your abstraction.
So let's try again. I don't think I'll waste further time with you on this. I will suggest that you do some more GM'ing and Dming in a game style that positions DM/GM as world builder. Jesse James doesn't fit in the Athens of Theseus. Not all games do this. Heck, Microcsope does collaborative world building as a game form.

I… seem to live in my own Bizarro World To a certain extent, any rpg is played in Not Reality, so maybe we are all in our own instances of Bizarro World. :smallcool:

I am going to say this again: my (considerable) experience has shown me that a collaborative effort between the DM/GM and the player to fitting the character into the world is a best practice. You are free to tell your GMs that their world is garbage or that you don't like them. See how far that gets you. Dale Carnegie wrote a book about stuff like this. :smallwink:

Quertus
2021-10-24, 11:35 AM
If you only enjoy playing about 5% of characters you are making, something about your character creation process is seriously messed up.

Lol, I can't really argue. I'm generally chasing stretch goals - kinda the opposite end of the spectrum from creating the same character over and over again.

If my goal was "success", I'd just play very samey characters.


Generally yes, that des happen. If one wants to be a noble, there needs to be a noble family they come from etc. "Making the character fit" generally does include small changes to the world as well as to the character. And there should be no unilateral changes. The GM doesn't change the character against the players wishes and the player doesn't introduce new elements into the world the GM is against. But if that is not enough to make the character fit, they can't be played.

In not one of the campaigns i have run the last decade i would have accepted such alien PCs that care only really about a world beyond the scope of the game where they come from. I am explicitel not interested in your characters coming from your developed worlds and treating the campaign setting we are using as if they were tourists.

I probably would have demanded that you make new PCs grounded in this world or find a different group as well. You could make a local clone that is similar. You could (in most cases) make someone from a far of land who lacks local knowledge(Even theme groups can often allow one exotic stranger). But not some real outsider with all the baggage from some completely other setting i don't know.



I am not against everyone bringing an ensemble of existing ones and we choose which character fits best. But i do that onl if all those characters are explicitely part of the same setting. Which usually means using official settings and not changing them much.

That's several ideas in there that I can respect.

Which, of course, means that, being me, I'll focus on the part that… well, not that I disagree with, but that I simply don't understand.

Honest question, take it literally: what advantage does a character who is a tourist from <exotic location off the map> have over a character who is from another world?

If multiple GMs were running the same setting? And at least one of them had the necessary skills to be able to let me make characters in that world? That would be awesome.

Can't say as I've really seen either half done well, let alone together. ::smallfrown::


They can always choose to play in a different world if they have your attitude about this. My experience trumps your abstraction. I don't think I'll waste further time with you on this. I will suggest that you do some more GM'ing and Dming in a game style that positions DM/GM as world builder. Jesse James doesn't fit in the Athens of Theseus. Not all games do this. Heck, Microcsope does collaborative world building as a game form.
To a certain extent, any rpg is played in Not Reality, so maybe we are all in our own instances of Bizarro World. :smallcool:

I am going to say this again: my (considerable) experience has shown me that a collaborative effort between the DM/GM and the player to fitting the character into the world is a best practice. You are free to tell your GMs that their world is garbage or that you don't like them. See how far that gets you. Dale Carnegie wrote a book about stuff like this. :smallwink:

I was going to reply differently, and then I realized: you misunderstood me, your reply doesn't actually match my post. And that's perfect!

So, when you misunderstand the character, and "massage" them in wrong, in a way that ruins the character, do you acknowledge your mistake, and work to fix it? Do you give the player the same courtesy you demand for yourself, to have ownership over what they create, and what does and did not fit with it?

Now, you're clearly too smart to be talking about Jesse James in the Athens of Theseus unless you've mistaken me for a complete duncewaffle. Since you've misread my post in general, I'll assume this is just part of your reading comprehension failure. "DC Quertus" is notoriously high. :smallwink:

I am curious about your comments about DM/GM as world builder. Given that I've been building worlds for the better part of 40 years (boredom would be my nemesis were I not constantly in my own head), I'm curious what you think I'd benefits from experiencing.

Lastly… IME, most GMs "world building" *is* garbage. Or, at least… Hmmm… what are you most likely to be able to hear? "Monochromatic" is too strong… maybe "painted with an incomplete pallet, indicative of their biases and blind spots"?

Look at it this way… assuming you know numerous GMs… actually, that may be a bad assumption. Fine. You've seemingly failed "DC Quertus" before, let's add in an extra step. Actors.

Who's the best actor you know for drama? Comedy? Character depth? Action? Facial expressions? Memorable characters?

Not all the same actor, right?

Well, "the best GM I know for…" isn't all the same GM.

IME, every GM has their strengths and weaknesses.

Some GMs have NPCs worth interacting with; others, not so much.

Some GMs handle difficult subjects well; others, not so much.

Some GMs understand concepts like "Rule of Three"; others, not so much.

Some GMs can handle slaying the princess and marrying the Dragon (or slaying then marrying the princess, or marrying then slaying the princess (to start a war with Guilder)); others, not so much.

Some GMs have world physics worth interacting with; others cannot think beyond, "the only way to…".

Some GMs (theoretically) have gods worth keeping around; I've yet to dig into an RPG world that didn't deserve deicide.

The GM's level of skill at personalities, history, lore, art, culture, "memes"/sayings, riddles/puzzles, psychology, sociology, economics… it all shows up in their world-building.

And when the group all come from different backgrounds, every player can, in their area(s) of strength, see just how weak the world-building is.

A IRL shopkeep once asked a gaming table, "what does it mean when a customer asks, 'how much is this?'?". I was the only one at the table to answer correctly.

Human psychology is hard. Most GMs fail miserably at it. And at every other aspect of works building - at least, from the perspective of an expert in that field.

So… yes, most GMs world building *is* garbage.

I prefer to focus on what they do well.

Satinavian
2021-10-25, 02:29 AM
Honest question, take it literally: what advantage does a character who is a tourist from <exotic location off the map> have over a character who is from another world?If your character comes from your world to the game world that means there is some connection between the worlds that a person could cross. That means that those worlds somehow have to fit in a greater cosmology and some common framework. It means that your character can transfer knowledge and technology and bring it into the setting. It means that the PCs could try to go to your world.

Being just a stranger from a far corner has similar consequences, but theya are more acceptable. Far corners of the world are established as part of the worldd. People being able to come from there go to there (with possible difficulties) is not new. The PC always could decide to visit the strange lands. There will also likely be no technology dissonance or if there is, there will be a reason established why no technology tranfer happens. The other place will also follow the same laws of nature and magic and share the same cosmology. People might know/explore other aspects of it or use it differently but the GM does not have to juggle competing universal truths, at worst it is competing beliefs that could be half-true.

And then there is the fact that a new character from far of lands is more of a blank sheet than an existing character and will more likely develop more attachment and engagement to wherever to the place the party is, to the NPCs and to the party members. Most of my campaigns are not about sightseeing and showcasing my world. They are about living there. And if i were to run some exploration campaign, that one would even more benefit from characters of a common background as that one would define what is expected and what is new or surprising.


If multiple GMs were running the same setting? And at least one of them had the necessary skills to be able to let me make characters in that world? That would be awesome.For me that has been the most common setup over the years. Partly because many groups had rotating GMs but the same characters in the same place, partly because many of the most popular systems in the area like SR or TDE do come with a main setting that is played most. Partly because sometimes i have taken part in many GM open table style setups where all the action was supposedly in the same setting so that all the characters (of which each player had several) could easily switch tables.



So… yes, most GMs world building *is* garbage.

I prefer to focus on what they do well.That is why taking some official setting and having several people expand on it is quite popular. I really don't know why in D&D the assumption is that the DM builds the whole setting alone and anew for every campaign. The results are rarely deep. Usually there is or maybe two interesting bits/twist and the campaign explores them but the rest is lackluster.
Not that all official settings are that good or convincing.

Quertus
2021-10-25, 02:06 PM
If your character comes from your world to the game world that means there is some connection between the worlds that a person could cross. That means that those worlds somehow have to fit in a greater cosmology and some common framework. It means that your character can transfer knowledge and technology and bring it into the setting. It means that the PCs could try to go to your world.

Being just a stranger from a far corner has similar consequences, but theya are more acceptable. Far corners of the world are established as part of the worldd. People being able to come from there go to there (with possible difficulties) is not new. The PC always could decide to visit the strange lands. There will also likely be no technology dissonance or if there is, there will be a reason established why no technology tranfer happens. The other place will also follow the same laws of nature and magic and share the same cosmology. People might know/explore other aspects of it or use it differently but the GM does not have to juggle competing universal truths, at worst it is competing beliefs that could be half-true.

And then there is the fact that a new character from far of lands is more of a blank sheet than an existing character and will more likely develop more attachment and engagement to wherever to the place the party is, to the NPCs and to the party members. Most of my campaigns are not about sightseeing and showcasing my world. They are about living there. And if i were to run some exploration campaign, that one would even more benefit from characters of a common background as that one would define what is expected and what is new or surprising.

For me that has been the most common setup over the years. Partly because many groups had rotating GMs but the same characters in the same place, partly because many of the most popular systems in the area like SR or TDE do come with a main setting that is played most. Partly because sometimes i have taken part in many GM open table style setups where all the action was supposedly in the same setting so that all the characters (of which each player had several) could easily switch tables.


That is why taking some official setting and having several people expand on it is quite popular. I really don't know why in D&D the assumption is that the DM builds the whole setting alone and anew for every campaign. The results are rarely deep. Usually there is or maybe two interesting bits/twist and the campaign explores them but the rest is lackluster.
Not that all official settings are that good or convincing.

Yet another excellent post. Kudos!

As you may have noticed from my "highlighting", I have more questions and disagreements with this post.

So, first, an easy one: just a "me" thing, but I'm much more likely to form connections and otherwise care with an established character than with a blank slate. Like a good Scrabble board, an established character worth playing has much more… well, everything… to form connections. More motivations, more personality, more interests, more history. New characters, lacking that history-induced plethora of solid dangly bits, lack the toolkit to facilitate the creation of meaningful relationships and connections.

So, it's demonstrably very untrue for me, that blank slates are better for forming connections, so I'm curious why you think this way.

-----

Senility willing, I'll make a thread about this, but, canonically, that I'm aware of,

Many official D&D settings have connections to one another.

D&D is connected to… uh, AFB, but… Earth, and at least half a dozen other systems (completely different genres, like CP2020, Top Secret, etc)

Marvel (which is NI connected universes) has had crossovers with DC (which is NI connected universes), some other super hero setting whose name eludes me (darn senility), and Star Trek(!)

Rifts is based on this idea of connected universes, as is the homebrew Paradox.

I'd say that, canonically, many systems (especially the ones I play) already are more connected than most believe.

I have no objection to an objection based on true statements that there is no known canonical connection between the universes in question. It's a "rules don't say you can" vs "rules don't say you can't" mindset, and neither is inherently wrong. But most systems I play are rife with canonical connections.

So, if you were running a system with canonical (if perhaps obscure) connections between universes, would you agree that, like travel to a foreign land, it's already canonically possible?

-----

The GM juggling competing universal truths (or half truths)… that one's tough. Because… I think I totally get where you're coming from, because it's one of the reasons that I want my characters to be "not from around here".

Lemme 'splain.

Nobody agrees on RAW. Even if they did, most worlds have house rules.

It's how Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, realized he wasn't just "very lost", but actually on another world. And why he's developed such a vast array of analytical tools, to evaluate the nature of "reality".

My characters' history… is their history. Changing the physics invalidates their history, and thereby the character. I've tried to reconcile "my character's backstory took place on this world" before, and it just doesn't work. It's way too much to ask, every time the GM decides this spell or that action works sightly differently on their world, for me to have to redo the world-building to make the character's backstory make sense again, let alone maybe produce a character like the one I've been running.

I don't know if that makes any sense or not, but… chaos theory, butterfly flaps its wings differently, and it changes the entire character.

I'd rather not deal with that.

-----

That leaves us with the underlined bit.

I'm not sure what you think I mean when I say "Exploration". I'm not 100% sure *I* know what I mean. :smallredface:. Heck, the "forming connections" we're both so keen on is something I often file under Exploration, because you cannot form new connections if you're not meeting new people.

Huh. Angry called it "Discovery". Anyway, here's some of what Angry had to say about Discovery:


Discovery seekers like to explore and learn new things. They like to uncover things. They are just as happy discovering the history of the world, the nature of the gods, the answers to mysteries and puzzles, and the reasons why things work. They simply want to learn and understand everything.

Oddly, discovery seekers also seem to be drawn to self-discovery. The same players who get excited just discovering the secret history of Orcus that no one knows also get a thrill from confronting a difficult moral issue and learning about what they, themselves, believe. Moral dilemmas and social quandaries

So… do you still claim to run a world without Exploration, without Discovery? If so, can you explain what the content of your games looks like?

Satinavian
2021-10-26, 02:43 AM
So, it's demonstrably very untrue for me, that blank slates are better for forming connections, so I'm curious why you think this way.People are different and i won't tell you what is true for you.
But if I would ask you about the best friends of Quertus, his worst enemies, where he made his home, what his lifegoals are, the achievements he is most proud of etc., how many of those come from the the world you last visited ? If you think about him, what kind of relations come to mind first and are those particularly recent ?



So, if you were running a system with canonical (if perhaps obscure) connections between universes, would you agree that, like travel to a foreign land, it's already canonically possible?
I would allow it, if it were not obscure. For obscure stuff... depends on whether it is considered canon at the table and with all those revisions, reboots, contradicting stories, side publications, cross promotions and offhand remarks that is not necessarily given. I don't care whether some long dead author once claimed to have had icecream with iconic wizards from certain worlds or some nonsense like that.

As a guideline, it should be somewhat recent, not ommitted/retconned in revisions/updates and it should be in material describing this specific setting. I won't make any allowance for crossworld settings that claim to be connected to everything and claiming alll other cosmologies are really part of their cosmology.


But for practical implications it would matter less than you might think, because :

Many official D&D settings have connections to one another.

D&D is connected to… uh, AFB, but… Earth, and at least half a dozen other systems (completely different genres, like CP2020, Top Secret, etc)I never played actually that much D&D, the last time is more than 10 years ago. And even then i only had three campaigns on official worlds and two of those were on Eberron which was consideed seperate at the time. I had some Pathfinder a couple years ago but for ownership reasons Galorion seems to be alone now as well. There were a couple of custom D&D settings long ago, but those all were wholly seperate and didn't even share the planes.

But most of the time i play non-D&D systems in non-D&D settings without any established connection to D&D settings.



Marvel (which is NI connected universes) has had crossovers with DC (which is NI connected universes), some other super hero setting whose name eludes me (darn senility), and Star Trek(!)
I don't care for superhero comics at all and consider this whole multiverse/timeline/crossover melange to be a nonsensical absurdity that is only fit for games that no one takes seriously. Thankfully i don't play any superhero games and don't have to put up with it. I don't think Star Trek handles it particularly well, but if i were to play a Star Trek campaign again, i probably would allow a character of one of those alternative universes, yes.


It's how Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, realized he wasn't just "very lost", but actually on another world. And why he's developed such a vast array of analytical tools, to evaluate the nature of "reality".
And those tools work reliably in other realities ? How do you manage that ?


My characters' history… is their history. Changing the physics invalidates their history, and thereby the character. I've tried to reconcile "my character's backstory took place on this world" before, and it just doesn't work. It's way too much to ask, every time the GM decides this spell or that action works sightly differently on their world, for me to have to redo the world-building to make the character's backstory make sense again, let alone maybe produce a character like the one I've been running.

I don't know if that makes any sense or not, but… chaos theory, butterfly flaps its wings differently, and it changes the entire character.

I'd rather not deal with that.
I fully understand. And i don't want to deal with characters that introduce other physics either which is why i want new characters from this world. You might remember that i talked about "local clone", not "character gets retconned to always have been here". Which meant that you would instead play a very similar but distinct local character that is not based in another world if this general type of character is one of the few you enjoy.
A bit similar to all those players who want to play some movie character in D&D. It generally doesn't end in that established movie character being transported into other worlds, it ends with a local character that just so happens to share many elements with them.


So… do you still claim to run a world without Exploration, without Discovery? If so, can you explain what the content of your games looks like?Fist, i want to iterate i qualified this with "most" and then talked about exceptions.

But for a non exploration campaign, i would assume that all players and all the characters are familiar with the setting from the start. For example because they have played campaigns in it for decades or at least read all the supplements. A typical such campaign could be a Shadowrun campaign with less focus on mythical stuff. The history of the SR world is pretty much known to the extend the PCs are likely to encounter it because most of it is just real world history. Most of the places are known and there is quite extensive and detailed material to many places. And as Runners tend to rely a lot on local networks, most of the action will be in such a place. Most of the jobs will also fall into the category of stuff shadowrunners do and there might be politics and faction struggle and stuff. But all the big players, the cons, the big organisations etc are already established and one would have reasonable expectations about their goals.
You don't play SR for the sense of wonder and encountering new things. You do it because you want to portray some badass runner surviving and struggling for riches and whatever in a magical cyberpunk world doing awesome stuff.
You can very well do similar things in fantasy campaigns if you have players that are equally familiar with the setting. Or with a historical setting.

Now some people use "Exploration" in a wider sense. I don't and am not interested to discuss semantics. Of course i will still have puzzles and surprizes even when not doing an exploration campaign.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-26, 08:12 AM
So, when you misunderstand the character, and "massage" them in wrong, in a way that ruins the character, do you acknowledge your mistake, and work to fix it? Please don't insult me like that again. Your presumption of bad faith is not well played.

I suspect that in reading through my position you may have missed a really important point, which perhaps I should have put into bold to make it stand out: it is a collaborative process between the GM/DM and the player, this creative process of making sure that the character fits the world. I fully expect any player-character to change and grow through a thing called emergent character development which happens through play. Not all do, but most do IME, in a campaign style game that lasts for more than a few sessions. While this usually doesn't happen in one shots, it has some times which is a bonus.

I will repeat that in bold: it is a collaborative process. My experience has also shown me that if the player won't work with me on that fundamental thing regarding our shared unreality - getting the character to fit into this fictional world - that tells me that their attitude is Player vs DM and it is best that they find a different group/table to play with.

I've played at tables with that tension, and while I usually enjoyed the games well enough, I no longer do.

Jay R
2021-10-26, 06:27 PM
Honest question, take it literally: what advantage does a character who is a tourist from <exotic location off the map> have over a character who is from another world?

There are ten thousand possible advantages.

1. If the game starts with low-level characters, then they do not have the ability to travel between planes.

2. Without introducing high-level magic like planar travel, the DM can introduce a friend, rival, enemy, or just a message from home.

3. In the last game I ran, the first character would be possible, but the second one would be inconsistent with the structure of that world and the basis for the coming campaign.

The world had been cut off from any other plane for decades. This happened to it on a regular basis

Occasionally, an evil plane starts to impinge on the PC’s homeworld, and monsters start appearing. These eras are known as “Ages of Heroes”. This was starting to happen when the PCs were first level, and would produce almost all of the adventures they would have.

[Yes, there are a few undead and other monsters trapped below ground, and deep in the forest there’s a tribe of goblins, but mostly, there have been no monsters, and therefore no adventurers for the last 80 years.]

The result is that, with no adventures beyond small wars for the last 80 years, there are no really high-level characters. There are a few 3rd-5th level old soldiers, but almost no casters at that level, and nothing above it.

The PCs became the heroes that saved a town at third level. They were the highest level people there. As more and higher-level monsters start creeping into the world, the land became more dangerous, and the adventurers became more important. The denizens of the Evil plane will take over that world unless great heroes grow and are able to prevent it.

For this campaign to work, no person has traveled to this world from another in the last 80 years, and no non-Evil creatures have ever come from another plane.

LordCdrMilitant
2021-10-26, 06:44 PM
A thing on this forum is the... fesishization isn't right, but its close... the extremely strong advocacy for a "session zero" to create characters, discuss house rules, and otherwise hash out things about the game and system before starting to play.

However, in actual play I've never seen this happen. The closest I've experienced is Champions games where the GM is explicitly, written in the rule book, supposed to set power levels, vet the characters, and collaborate with the players before the game starts. Outside of that one system I've experienced... call it a sort of passive aggressive hostility towards a "session zero". With a combination of players insinuating that any GM intervention during character creation is some sort of bad "character railroading", and an idea that "session zero" isn't playing the game and therefore wastes a game session.

Interestingly, a GM saying something like "PH +1" which D&D AL uses isn't regarded as interference. On the other hand, this "anti-session zero" is so ingraned in my local gaming culture that most GMs (and all D&D DMs) will not interact with any PC backgrounds provided by the player. On the gripping hand my local gaming culture is definitely into the more crunchy and complex rule sets, seeing many more players coming in from technical backgrounds and things like the Warhammer armies games as opposed to more literary backgrounds and rules light games. That produces a more "rules bound" culture that prefers explicit rules permission for things over more free form "it doesn't say not to" styles.

So I'm asking the playground: In your real life, in person, TTRPGs, do you really have a session zero where the players all come in without completed character sheets, talk to each other about making their characters fit the game & party, the GM lays out the tone & house rules, backstories are swapped & adjusted, and that's pretty much the whole 3-5 hour session?

It's functionally critical for me to have a session zero, because if I asked my players to come in with pre-built characters, they'll come in with one of:
-Nothing, didn't even try
-Nothing, looked at it, got confused, gave up
-Nothing, but did read it enough to know that there's some specific feature they want to have and need help to figure out how to get it
-Nothing, but does have an extensive character concept they're going to tell me about while I find the right set of rules to realize what they want
-Something, but it's built entirely wrong, so it's basically nothing

So, whatever I planned on the first session being, it's actually going to be generating characters. And maybe learning how to resolve basic tasks if they manage to actually finish their characters in a timely fashion, though there's good odds that that's going to have to wait for session two.


Part of it is the fact that a quick survey of games I've run recently includes a lot of games that notably aren't D&D and feature substantially more free character building than the basically canned class packages that D&D works with, but on the other hand, I think they'd still have difficulty making characters for D&D.

Quertus
2021-10-27, 08:24 AM
People are different and i won't tell you what is true for you.
But if I would ask you about the best friends of Quertus, his worst enemies, where he made his home, what his lifegoals are, the achievements he is most proud of etc., how many of those come from the the world you last visited ? If you think about him, what kind of relations come to mind first and are those particularly recent ?

Excellent question. I hope you'll take it as praise when I say that your skills are up there with Cluedrew and Angry.

"The last place Quertus visited", sadly, isn't a trivial question to answer. For the three *best* answers to that question,

* The results of the one-shot are unclear (but one life goal accomplished)

* Several allies, a shop, one of his worst enemies, one of his greatest achievements / life goal, one of his greatest failures.

* Numerous allies that I hope are "best friends", the first seeds of a life goal, far too many of the "worst" enemies.

"If I think about Quertus"… it depends on my mood. He's been rather solitary lately, so ¾ of the ways I picture him don't involve many "relationships". But the 4th way, that is rife with relationships? I'd say that the new ones outnumber the old.

If I sit and reminisce long enough, sure, the old outnumber the new. But that's… a "story of my life" view, all of what informs his personality, more than "how I picture him".

Clear as mud?

Contrast that with my senile mind's best guess for Quertus' first 3 places visited:

* A couple of allies, a modest accomplishment

* A best friend

* The seeds of a life goal

My takeaway is, with the right GM, in the right setting, existing characters do, indeed, interact better, form relationships and interests better, than blank slates. (EDIT: at least for me. Still curious why you would think otherwise / why your presumed experience differs)


And those tools work reliably in other realities ? How do you manage that ?


Another excellent question.

Building them involved lots of "science" (hypotheses, trial and error, testing). Quertus has a great deal of experience (now) in dealing with "new systems". (He'll happily abandon "the adventure" to research "new magic", as numerous GMs have discovered. And I've repeatedly had to bring a new character when my signature academia mage left the spotlight.)

Making his analytic toolkit work in other realities involves a) not going to realities where they don't work. :smallwink: Thus the importance of trans-reality analytic tools. :smallwink: (EDIT: or, as one of his allies would put it, "look before you leap". Which also necessitates *choosing* to travel to new worlds, and preventing / minimizing "unplanned"/"forced" trips.)

Or, alternately, as one of his allies would put it, "carrying his reality with him" also works. :smallcool:


Please don't insult me like that again. Your presumption of bad faith is not well played.

I suspect that in reading through my position you may have missed a really important point, which perhaps I should have put into bold to make it stand out: it is a collaborative process between the GM/DM and the player, this creative process of making sure that the character fits the world. I fully expect any player-character to change and grow through a thing called emergent character development which happens through play. Not all do, but most do IME, in a campaign style game that lasts for more than a few sessions. While this usually doesn't happen in one shots, it has some times which is a bonus.

I will repeat that in bold: it is a collaborative process. My experience has also shown me that if the player won't work with me on that fundamental thing regarding our shared unreality - getting the character to fit into this fictional world - that tells me that their attitude is Player vs DM and it is best that they find a different group/table to play with.

I've played at tables with that tension, and while I usually enjoyed the games well enough, I no longer do.

Well, you continue to fail to explicitly state that you wouldn't insist on bad-touch massaging the character poorly, hiding behind the same vague words like "collaborative process" that, for all my bad GMs, was just code for exactly what I've described.

Until you take such a stand, and actually define what a "collaborative process" under you does and does not look like, I'll continue to question what you mean by those words.

That you find such questions insulting rather than an opportunity to share what good GMing looks like… might not be a good sign.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-27, 11:42 AM
Well, you continue to fail to explicitly state that you wouldn't insist on bad-touch massaging the character poorly, I am in no way required to issue such a statement. It is both condescending and insulting on your part to demand such.
(And if we go back to the original thing, most players in my experience show up with a Character that fits the world well enough - it's the exception that we - there's that word again, Quertus, we - have to figure out how get the character to fit).
What is really bugging you, Quertus? What horrible experience did you have that has you grinding away at imagined horrors? What did a DM once do to you? :smallconfused:

, was just code for exactly what I've described.
That's a pile of horse apples. You just raised a big red flag when you pretend that someone else is speaking in code.

Once again, I must ask you: why do you assume bad faith on my part?
Why do I (or anyone) have to assure you "Oh, no, I wouldn't do {this mythical bad thing that you project into the conversation and have a phobia about}" before you'll stop insulting me?

Your tone is a problem here.
You stance is of player-versus-GM here.
In this conversation, you are engaging in projection when you assume bad things, man. (Ref is an old Dennis Hopper commercial).

Not well played.

Once again: it is a collaborative process. For reasons that escaped me, you seem (or choose?) to not understand what that means as regards a relationship between a player and a GM as they work together to fit a character into a game word - if this sub-arc of the conversation is any indication of your state of mind.

Which, to be honest, baffles me. :smallconfused:

Until you take such a stand, and actually define what a "collaborative process" under you does and does not look like, I'll continue to question what you mean by those words. That's a willfully hostile attitude, and not well played. Whatever game you are playing here, you can go play it by yourself. (Making ultimatums during an internet discussion is a sign of a variety of things, but that's a digression that we can all do without).

I was going to offer an example of how we folded a new character into Saltmarsh a couple of years ago, how that iterative process went over the course of a few days, but now that I see what I am dealing with your claims on my time are denied.

King of Nowhere
2021-10-27, 12:09 PM
Well, you continue to fail to explicitly state that you wouldn't insist on bad-touch massaging the character poorly, hiding behind the same vague words like "collaborative process" that, for all my bad GMs, was just code for exactly what I've described.

Until you take such a stand, and actually define what a "collaborative process" under you does and does not look like, I'll continue to question what you mean by those words.

That you find such questions insulting rather than an opportunity to share what good GMing looks like… might not be a good sign.

I would find the question mildly insulting too, because it presumes bad faith on the part of the DM. You seem to think that "collaborative process" is just a facade, a lie that the DM tells his players while he mercilessly rips apart their ideas for the lulz of control.
"cooperative process" means that people talk and find common ground. If I must try to elaborate... let's see, the player comes with an idea, i review it and see if it fits in the campaign world. if it chafes on some points, i tell the player why, and see with the player if there is some way to reconcile it.

As an example, one of my player wanted to play a race that is not in my campaign world (i also dislike crossovers and fantasy kitchen sinks). I proposed him to be a mutant, as the world backstory features heavily on some wild magic zones and it's one of the main plots in the campaign. the player liked it, so he's using the stats of that race with the assumption that he's a mutant created by wild magic while I don't have to hamfist a new race and culture in the setting and wonder how it fits with all the rest; everyone wins.
Another player had a backstory of mistrust towards power because his friends died of stuff that clerics could easily cure, but they charged too much. I told him "this is a high magic world, there are enough low level clerics to heal everyone; and even in the evil-ruled places they are pragmatic enough that they won't lose a laborer to save a low level spell". We talked about how to justify his backstory into the world, and eventually we came up with the idea of an epidemics that would, at first, require more clerical healing than it was available; in that circumstance, the clerics prioritized the rich who could pay, the poor were left for later.

Not related to character creation, but same cooperative process. a while ago I proposed to nerf solid fog because it hurts any ranged build too much without significant chances of counterplay. I wrote in chat my opinion about it, focusing on how it would be unfair to the party ranged rogue if the enemies used it on him. And I basically told them to vote on it. The general rule about bans is that if they can use something, their enemies also can.
Well, 4/5 of the party said "you and [other player] are the experts on mechanics, we'll trust your decision". So I talked it with the other player. Eventually I persuaded him that the spell as written would be disfunctional for the game we want to have. He, on the other hand, persuaded me that my attempt at nerf was too hard, and we worked out a modified version, a lesser nerf.

I'm not sure what would happen if we found something we can't agree upon, because in four years with this group it's never happened that we couldn't agree on something.
It's surprising how much agreement you can find if you're in a group of reasonable people with mutual trust, with everyone willing to compromise.

which is why some of us find your insinuations of "what if the dm does it in a way that's bad for you" mildly insulting. the dm would talk with you and find a solution that you can accept, and to imply otherwise is to imply bad faith.

P.S. you also seem to have a different character creation process than most of us, in that you come at a table with a fully grown character. Most people only bring a vague idea in the beginning, and the character will become fleshed out as it's played over time. and if it doesn't work, you can change character.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-27, 12:15 PM
I would find the question mildly insulting too, because it presumes bad faith on the part of the DM. You seem to think that "collaborative process" is just a facade, a lie that the DM tells his players while he mercilessly rips apart their ideas for the lulz of control.

"cooperative process" means that people talk and find common ground. If I must try to elaborate... let's see, the player comes with an idea, i review it and see if it fits in the campaign world. if it chafes on some points, i tell the player why, and see with the player if there is some way to reconcile it.
{SNIP} That's how it works for people having a conversation in good faith, yes. :smallsmile:

P.S. you also seem to have a different character creation process than most of us, in that you come at a table with a fully grown character. Most people only bring a vague idea in the beginning, and the character will become fleshed out as it's played over time. and if it doesn't work, you can change character. That's a good summary. (Thanks for articulating a few of the things that I was thinking but that I wasn't able to put into words)

There are some game systems though, and I think back to the original Traveller, that has a lot of "pre load" put into chargen that some other games don't.

It may be useful to figure out which game is being referred to in some discussions like this, since in a game like Roll for Shoes what you do and are good at changes, and varies wildly as you roll the dice and do stuff during play. (Granted, that's a GMless game).
In a game like Dungeon World (Fellowship is the variant that I played) bonds accrue during play, so that "a fully fleshed out character" isn't really a thing in that game: your bonds and relationships with PCs and NPCs are a piece of emergent development as the game plays, and they have mechanical impacts. (I found it appealing, player-side).

kyoryu
2021-10-27, 07:46 PM
I would find the question mildly insulting too, because it presumes bad faith on the part of the DM. You seem to think that "collaborative process" is just a facade, a lie that the DM tells his players while he mercilessly rips apart their ideas for the lulz of control.
"cooperative process" means that people talk and find common ground. If I must try to elaborate... let's see, the player comes with an idea, i review it and see if it fits in the campaign world. if it chafes on some points, i tell the player why, and see with the player if there is some way to reconcile it.


I usually see that this could result in GMs being jerks, and therefore we should have rules to limit jerkness.

I find this argument strange, myself. I'd rather just not play with jerks. And if someone is unwittingly being a jerk, the simple conversation of "hey, knock that off" should suffice.

OldTrees1
2021-10-27, 08:51 PM
That's how it works for people having a conversation in good faith, yes.


"collaborative process"

Sorry I took the time to dig back through this subthread of yours. Why are you arguing? This sounds like a mistranslation error that exploded into two people arguing about nothing.


Quertus, no matter how much a player and GM work together there is the potential for a character to not fit a campaign (which also implies vice versa via symmetry). Korvin already explicitly stated that it is a collaborative process where the player and GM check to see what can change about the character and the world/campaign/setting to fix the conflicts. That process can fail, and it can fail amicably with the players (including the GM) finding a different character, a different campaign, or a different table.

The only thing Korvin said was the GM makes the final call about what the campaign will be and what characters are allowed in that campaign. No matter how poorly phrased that was, that is just a long winded summary of "GMs make rulings" which is fundamental to many, but not all, RPG systems.


Raise of hands, do either of you disagree with "The GM and player should work together to check to see if the character and campaign/world/setting can work together, including looking at the possibility to change what can be changed about the character/campaign/world/setting"?

I am itching to play Raven, my undead-army nation-founding necromancer. It would not fit in the last 4 campaigns because there was a character-campaign conflict* that could not be resolved by changing everything possible about the campaign and everything possible about the character. That is a fine outcome for a healthy group (in my case I swapped to a different character and will wait for a later campaign).

*(The campaign was in 5E and the character breaks 5E and is broken by 5E. I have hopes for 6E).

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-28, 07:20 AM
I am itching to play Raven, my undead-army nation-founding necromancer. It would not fit in the last 4 campaigns because there was a character-campaign conflict* that could not be resolved by changing everything possible about the campaign and everything possible about the character.
*(The campaign was in 5E and the character breaks 5E and is broken by 5E. I have hopes for 6E). And I've got enough 5e books that I hope 6e doesn't show up for a long, long time. :smallyuk:

Did your necromancers in 5e ever run into a cleric? :smallwink:

OldTrees1
2021-10-28, 09:00 AM
And I've got enough 5e books that I hope 6e doesn't show up for a long, long time. :smallyuk:

Did your necromancers in 5e ever run into a cleric? :smallwink:

I too am not ready for 6E yet either.

My 5E undead-army nation-founding necromancer never passed character creation due to having a paradox of too few* minions and too strong of minions at the same time. Someone else did play an undead-squad battle mage, since their character concept did not require as many skeletons, 5E's stronger skeletons were not an issue. They did run into and defeat some clerics.

* In 3E I counted offscreen undead by the thousands.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-28, 11:06 AM
They did run into and defeat some clerics.
Clerics can turn undead. Clerics can also destroy undead. Sounds like the wizards didn't rely solely on their minions. :smallsmile:

icefractal
2021-10-28, 02:00 PM
Or it was archer skeletons gunning them down before they got within turning range. With bounded accuracy, massed archers kill a lot of things in 5E.

Satinavian
2021-10-28, 02:16 PM
Clerics can turn undead. Clerics can also destroy undead. Sounds like the wizards didn't rely solely on their minions. :smallsmile:
They technically never said that this nation founding necromancer was a wizards. As this character seems to come from 3.x, clerics get those spell sooner, have rebuke and desecrate and are all around the better undead masters where wizard necros get more of this instant kill and level drain stuff. And then there is a myriad of other undead focused classes and even some prestige classes in that dition as well. Ridiculously high number of pretty weak skelletons might as well have been a horned harbinger or some such.

I really don't know why everyone assumes a wizard first.

KorvinStarmast
2021-10-28, 04:33 PM
As this character seems to come from 3.x, [snip] I really don't know why everyone assumes a wizard first. Hmm, edition differences.

icefractal
2021-10-28, 05:59 PM
As this character seems to come from 3.x, clerics get those spell sooner, have rebuke and desecrate and are all around the better undead masters where wizard necros get more of this instant kill and level drain stuff.

Someone else did play an undead-squad battle mage, since their character concept did not require as many skeletons, 5E's stronger skeletons were not an issue. They did run into and defeat some clerics.
The character who defeated the Clerics was a 5E one, it sounds like.

OldTrees1
2021-10-29, 01:46 AM
Sounds like a game of telephone. Maybe I should clarifiy:

Player A: OldTrees
Player A's Character Concept A: Undead-army nation-founding necromancer

The character concept is not class specific. Although in 3E it was a Necromancer 1 / Dread Necromancer 8+ / Red Wizard of Thay 5+. Although they did have Arcane Disciple Renewal and a Desecration magic item so it was a mixture of arcane and divine magic.
I forget if I breached 1 million skeletons. It was at least above 100K.
The character ran into many clerics, but the nation-founding undead-army was usually miles away offscreen as part of the new nation's infrastructure. Cleric armies could try to invade, but the right animation recipe made Turning a non factor in practice.


The character concept does not work in 5E and was not attempted in 5E. That was the relevant part of this tangent. If I had tried it then it would disappoint me by orders of magnitude too few skeletons and simultaneously be too overpowered due to archery battalion bounded accuracy. As an example where a character did not fit a campaign, even after examining what could be changed about the character & campaign, I did not try to run that character.


Player B: Not OldTrees
Player B's Character Concept B: A battle mage that used a squad of skeleton archers as part of their repitore.

This character concept was a Wizard. It also was conceived with a lot fewer undead and with them being on screen instead of off screen.
This 5E character ran into a few 5E clerics but the skeleton archers were safe in the back because the party had a strong front line. The skeletons were more likely to die to Gargoyles than to Clerics. Plus dead cleric = replacement corpse.

Quertus
2021-10-29, 08:17 AM
Raise of hands, do either of you disagree with "The GM and player should work together to check to see if the character and campaign/world/setting can work together, including looking at the possibility to change what can be changed about the character/campaign/world/setting"?

I am itching to play Raven, my undead-army nation-founding necromancer. It would not fit in the last 4 campaigns because there was a character-campaign conflict* that could not be resolved by changing everything possible about the campaign and everything possible about the character. That is a fine outcome for a healthy group (in my case I swapped to a different character and will wait for a later campaign).

*(The campaign was in 5E and the character breaks 5E and is broken by 5E. I have hopes for 6E).

I am uncertain regarding the correct formatting style for a property response to your statement, but no, I do not disagree with your statement, or with your process (which looks quite similar to my own).

OldTrees1
2021-10-29, 01:09 PM
I am uncertain regarding the correct formatting style for a property response to your statement, but no, I do not disagree with your statement, or with your process (which looks quite similar to my own).

Then it sounds like you were both arguing over nothing. All 3 of us use a very similar process. There was merely a miscommunication upthread.

HidesHisEyes
2021-10-31, 02:45 AM
Then it sounds like you were both arguing over nothing. All 3 of us use a very similar process. There was merely a miscommunication upthread.

Funny because approach really is radically different, and I only had a brief and rather civilised discussion with Quertus.