canyonwalker | Entries tagged with group dynamics

Yesterday reminded me of the "old days" in software selling. These old days aren't that old, of course. I'm only talking about the mid-aughts (when I started in technical sales) through the early 10s! So, what was so 15-years-ago about yesterday? It was meeting prospects and colleagues face-to-face for sales work.

Yesterday wasn't really even a travel day, per se. It's not like the old days when I was traveling a lot to San Diego, Chicago, New York, etc.— or traveling overseas— for sales calls. This one was just a ~30 minute drive away in Newark, California.

I drove to Newark, made a quick pit stop to pick up a colleague who did fly in and stopped at a nearby restaurant for lunch, then drove on to the customer's office. We had a big meeting with in-person attendees, upward of 20 people in the room. The last time I presented at a customer meeting that well attended in-person was probably 2018.

The Meeting

Seeing how big the meeting room was— it was set up as a classroom— and how many people filed in, I fretted about how the meeting would flow. Rooms where the seats are all front-facing discourage genuine conversation. People see the physical layout and think, "Okay, I'm supposed to let the presenter speak."And when there's a large crowd in a meeting, anything over 10 let alone the 20 we had yesterday, the audience size also discourages a lot of people from speaking up. It's like people are thinking, "My question had better be worth interrupting 20 people or I should keep quiet." Moreover a lot of people are intimidated by such gatherings. They're reluctant to speak up for fear that asking a question may make them sound stupid or acknowledging that there's a problem they don't know how to solve will make their colleagues think less of them.

I fretted about these problems but I fought against them. I purposefully turned around a desk and faced the group at their level instead of standing behind the lectern. I invited questions throughout my presentation. I engaged each person who asked a question with a discussion to explore their needs to make sure I was addressing them on point. And I never said things like, "Well, moving along now...."

My techniques to overcome the lecture-hall setup worked. The meeting was way more interactive than I expected. Sure, not every one of the 20 attendees asked questions, but at least 6 different people did, and some asked multiple questions. And more than half the group stayed after the meeting to chat with my colleague and me.

The After-Meeting

Oh, but the successful f2f meeting wasn't the only part that felt old school. After the meeting in Newark I drove my colleague to his hotel in downtown San Jose. Just driving with a colleague felt old school. It used to be a regular, almost daily thing in my life as a salesperson years ago. Now it happens maybe a few times a year.

What did we do in the car? We talked. We debriefed on how the meeting went. We discussed what worked well and what we could improve. We discussed next steps with this prospective customer. We also discussed sales strategy more broadly in our company and with our latest products and positioning.

When we got to SJ my colleague suggested getting a drink together. I was happy to. Again, this was a many-times-a-week thing among sellers years ago; today, again, it seems to happen only a few times a year. We sidled up at the bar in his hotel and talked for another hour. There, we talked less about the company and more about life in general. I learned about his family, his house, his outlook on life; and he learned about mine.

After a couple of drinks each— two small glasses of beer, really; our aim was to relax together, not get soused— we noticed it was going on 7 and decided to get dinner together. Original Joe's was 1/2 block away, so I suggested we eat there. Dinner was more of the same. We ate slowly, talking the whole time. It was about 9:30 when I walked him back to his hotel (I was parked there anyway 😅) and drove home.

A few weeks ago I blogged about strengthening trust between players in role-playing games, "Trust & Promises in Role-Playing Games". It was inspired by a blog I'd seen on Gnome Stew on the same topic. Well, the Gnomes wrote a sequel to their blog, "Earning Their Trust: The Rules" and it has inspired me to write on the topic again.

The focus of the Gnomes' latest article in the series is how game masters (GMs) can use game rules well— or poorly— to make or break the players' enjoyment of the game. The gist is that slavish adherence to "The Rules" generally weakens enjoyment of the game and that good GMs will think about when it's right to loosen up their interpretation/application of the rules to promote everyone having a fun time. That's pretty much in line with an idea I wrote about in a few blogs entries back in January, "What's Your Roleplaying Game About?" and "Taking it Easy with Encumbrance in D&D". What really resonated with me in the Gnomes' latest article, though, was one of their sub-headings, Punitive Parent VS “Cool Mom” GM.

Within that phrase it was the two words Punitive Parent that really resonated. ...And not because I've ever been punitive parent or worried about being one, but because it immediately struck me, "OMG, 'punitive parent' totally describes almost all the GMs I played with in my teen years!"

What's a punitive-parent type GM? It's someone who's actually more than just a stickler for the rules. Getting stuck on rules is a trap that a person with low imagination or low confidence might stumble into. Using the rules so as to be punitive, though, is different. It's more. It's not lack of creativity or courage, it's asserting your will over the players' style of play and using the rules as punishment to enforce compliance. It's being a dick.

How is a dick GM different from a mere rules-stickler GM? A rules stickler can be tedious but ultimately they're likely to be fair. A dick GM goes out of their way to use and abuse the rules, including making up new rules at the table, to punish players for not doing things their way. For example:

One GM in high school would enforce trivial rules to slow down the game every time he hadn't prepared actual content for the game session. I remember one full-day session when we players spent the whole day rolling dice to see if our characters could avoid getting lost in the forest, forage food, cook it safely, and survive the effects of dehydration, starvation, and food poisoning. Yes, we were making Fortitude Saves to see if we puked from eating undercooked deer meat! That dick had the gall further to gaslight us into thinking we wasted a whole fucking game session rolling not to puke because we weren't playing intelligently enough.

One of my GMs in high school would keep a ledge of black marks against players for actions he deemed to be "not in character". Each black mark was an experience point penalty, meaning it slowed your character's advancement. (Advancing characters is a huge part of RPGs, BTW.) Nominally these were judgments that you weren't playing your character "in character" and thus not eligible to advance. Except in reality the black marks were arbitrary behavior grades. If GM thought you, the player, weren't taking things seriously enough, black mark. Making a joke at the table that he didn't like, black mark. Speaking out of turn too much, black mark.

Yeah, I played with a bunch of dick GMs in my teen years. Partly it was common cultural assumption of how the game was supposed to be played back then. Partly it's because people who are dicks are often ego-driven and thus attracted to GMing because they see it as an opportunity to flex on others. And partly it's because enough of us gamers put up with dick GMs treating us poorly. (Why did I/we put up with it? I reflected on the social dynamics of speaking up about problems players/GMs in another blog after I tried— and quit— several virtual gaming groups during the Pandemic.)

And yeah, players can be dicks, too; it's not just GMs. In addition to fellow players being a big part of the reason I quit or nearly quit multiple new games I tried a few years ago, I still remember games from 20+ years ago when I, as a GM, ended a game or asked a player to leave because the player was being a dick.

It's like how when people ask me at work, "What do you look for in hiring a successful sales candidate?" My concise answer is, "1) ... 2) ... And 3) Don't be a dick." I'll start using the same Rule Number Three for deciding whom to play with in roleplaying games.

One of the blogs I read about Role-Playing Games (RPGs) such as Dungeons & Dragons is Gnome Stew. Recently the authors there posted an article that got me thinking, "Earning Their Trust: Keeping Your Promises". The article discusses different types of promises made by the GM in setting up a game, including those which are typically made "Out loud" versus only implied.

One thing I like to do in setting up games, especially via a Session Zero, is make implicit assumptions explicit. Thus when there are genre promises, like the expectation players have that there will be swords and sorcery and lots of dice rolling when a GM says, "I've got a great idea for a D&D game!" I like to confirm those up front— or caution the players if things will be different.

I find there are also a number of implicit promises that should be made in a game that the Gnome Stew article didn't cover. These are in the category of the social contract of gaming. Some of them are related to genre conventions, too... and some of those conventions are bad and thus really need to be addressed explicitly!

Here are some of the promises I make to my players at the start of a game. These relate to the trust I want my players to have in me, as the GM, and in the game itself so they're able to have more fun playing it.

There are no "gotcha" traps that will result in your character's death with minimal warning or ability to avoid it.

If you're at risk of character death because you're doing something stupid, rash, or ill-advised, I will give you warning. I won't stop you when you insist or persist, but I will give you at least one solid opportunity to rethink your actions with only minor harm.

When your character would know something important, I won't penalize you not knowing it, too. In fact I'll strive to give you appropriate in-character cues, e.g. via clue notes. For example, a player may not know venturing into the badlands when a storm's coming is dangerous, but a character who grew up next to those badlands or has wilderness travel skill would never wander in unprepared.

With D&D especially all three of these are old genre conventions I am explicitly breaking. D&D from its early days in the 1970s and 1980s (I started playing in the early 80s) frequently devolved into an adversarial game. This came from tactical genre conventions like puzzles and traps with save-or-die mechanics meant to kill a character whose player made a bad die roll or failed to declare an action exactly right. Though the common nature of playing D&D shifted through the 1990s, players who remember those bad old days still worry that maybe the GM is "out to get them". Thus I use these explicit promises to build trust that they can have fun playing the game.

A few weeks ago I read an article about some of the wisdom of Charlie Munger. Munger, who died last year at age 99, was famously the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the corporate conglomerate controlled by the legendary Warren Buffett. In an article on Moneywise, ‘Who in the hell needs a Rolex watch?’: Why Charlie Munger warned Americans against ‘pretentious expenditures, the authors tell how Munger criticized people buying status symbols and yearning to have as much as the (wealthier) people around them. “I have conquered envy in my own life,” Munger famously said.

While I have great respect for Munger's business prowess, reading this article made me think, "Wealthy aging billionaire is out of touch with the 99.99%." I could quickly think of two reasons far better than tongue-clucking about envy why people— people who aren't billionaires— yearn for more and buy status symbols.

But first, Rolex watches? Okay, Boomer. 🤣 Seriously, affluent younger people are not buying Rolex. It's like your grandfather's Buick. Other brands lead mindshare among affluent people in their 30s and 40s, even some in their 50s, today.

Now, here are the two reasons other than "envy" that immediately came to mind for why people in the middle class, and especially the upper middle, strive for more:

1. Financial Security

The main reason I see why those of us who enjoy a certain degree of comfort today, i.e,, those of us who are middle class & upper middle class, keep striving for more is that we are trying to create financial security. Or, to put that in terms of another of Munger's aphorisms— to structure your planning around things you want to avoid—the imperative here is Don't die in poverty.

Building wealth in our working years has become critical to avoid living old age in poverty. Older generations had retirement plans and confidence in Social Security. In Gen X we saw retirement plans largely disappear from the private sector when we were starting our careers. Union membership was trending down, as well. Today it's at 10% in the US– and half of that is in the public sector. Union membership in the private sector is 3%. We also saw from back in the early 1990s the upcoming demographic crunch in Social Security that will force significant benefit cuts by the time we reach retirement age. At the same time, medical costs have been spiraling ever higher. Lots of retirees with only modest nest eggs are being bankrupted by health costs. My cohort and I thus internalized from our early 20s, and have seen only further proof with every passing year, that when it comes to living in retirement, we're on our own to avoid poverty.

Even the Moneywise article points out that Munger's tongue-clicking about envy came as he was sitting on a multi-billion dollar pile of assets. Yeah, Richie Rich, you've got yours, 100 times over. You don't have to worry about a damn thing, and haven't for at least 50 years. Stop being a shit to those of us still trying to build even one one-hundredth of your wealth.

2. The Needs of Networking

Why do people "Keep up with the Joneses?" Sure, one reason is envy. But there's another reason, too. It's more subtle. Not everyone gets it. I sure didn't when I was younger and had a very STEM/academic mindset. As I've matured in my career in business, though, it's become very obvious. To get ahead in business you need the support of people with power and wealth. And to get that support from the powerful and wealthy, you need to meet them where they're at.

Where are they at? For one, they're playing golf. To climb the ladder in business you need to play golf— because golf is very much a sport of powerful in business, and lots of business networking happens on the golf course. Now, golf is expensive. You may need a membership in a club. Maybe a country club? That's actually not a bad idea because wealthy people networks are centered around country clubs. People you meet and can get introduced there can make the difference between your business ideas being embraced and funded, versus you being like the proverbial Hollywood waiter with a script nobody cares about.

Oh, and while you're driving to the golf course, or the country club, or even the sailing club— another place where the demographic of business leaders hangs out— you'll need to roll up in the right kind of car. And the right shoes, watch, etc. Yes, people make snap judgments about you in the first few seconds based on your appearance. Even the wealthy do that. If you roll up in a Toyota Camry, most of this demographic is not going to admire your fiscal sensibility. They're going to look right past you. You need not just a statement watch but a statement car.

Oh, and are your kids going to public schools? Ha ha ha, the wealthy and powerful people's kids are not. If you want to bond with them over your shared love of your kids, you need to send your kids to the same schools. Y'know, the ones that cost $50,000 a year. Per kid. And we're not talking Harvard, here. We're talking elementary school.

"But didn't Munger climb the business ladder without such expenses?" you might ask. Yes, he did. But one counter-example does not disprove a general fact. Munger was lucky enough to meet a fellow thrifty contrarian, Warren Buffett, early in his career. Very few of us ever get the chance to be hired by a unicorn like Buffett. I also note Munger also benefited from network connections in a different way— through family privilege. For example, when he was rejected from Harvard law school, a friend of his father's called up the dean of the school— the dean— and told him to admit Munger. Did Munger get through law school on his own merits? Yes; he graduated magna cum laude. But the challenge with succeeding on merit alone is that there are also more worthy applicants, whether it's for school or a promotion or a business investment, then there are spots for acceptance. The one whose worthy application gets accepted is the one that gets shuffled to the top of the pile by networking connections. And unless you're born into them, they cost money to build.

We played session 7 of my D&D game The City of the Dead on Friday night. It was delayed from a week earlier when one player had a bad work schedule and I was still marginal from a long-running cold. And even this Friday, things went slowly. The group moved slowly and didn't manage to get back to the actual City of the Dead.

What did they do instead? First, they finished up with training and bookkeeping stuff in the home city of Durendal. That wound up taking over 90 minutes. I was frustrated by that because I'd invested a lot of effort in trying to streamline this aspect of the game. See my blogs from recent weeks on What's Your Role-Playing Game About?, Taking it Easy with Encumbrance, and "I Know a Guy. Tony."

The net-net of it for Friday night was I packaged up all the bookkeep-y things the PCs might want to do in town and presented them as menu choices. For example:

Everyone wanted to train up for a new level, but you were short on money for expenses from the loot you sold. However you have 3,000 Denarii in the group hopper. You can pull 800 out of there, then everyone's trained. Fair?

You decided you'd give the fancy suit of armor recovered from the dead caravan to Uncle Keyevan as a return on his lost investment in the caravan. You debated whether to give it to him now or later. Giving it now puts you in his good graces now, smoothing the path for you to go back out there. Giving it later... really has no benefit. Consider that Keyevan will soon be aware you've come back with 1,000s of Denarii of loot plus a few magic items, and will be suspicious why you're holding out on him.

You might want to scribe some spell scrolls to help with the most dangerous part of the mission you know is coming up. (I proposed this because the players hadn't thought of it, and I know they will ask to ret-con it— "Oh, we totally would've scribed scrolls in town before leaving!"— when the big combat starts 3 days later.) Here are 3 spells that would help: A, B, and C. Here's the cost of making each. Which do you want to make?

...But still this took what felt like forever. On every choice, on even these simple, boiled-down, yes-or-no, A-or-B type choices, the players hit the skids and went into a tailspin of analysis.

Perhaps the problem was none of them (and there are only three) had a strong opinion on what to do. It was that dreaded, "I don't know, what do you want to do?" loop. I ended up being the one prodding them, "Gang, we're spending too much time on mundane stuff. This is designed not to be a hard question. Pick an option and let's move on."

I suppose I could have made it go faster by simply telling the players what they do instead of giving them even simplified yes-or-no, A-or-B menu choices. That approach really rubs me the wrong way, though, as it removes player agency. I've played in games like that, where, in the name of simplification and streamlining, the GM skips over all the prep choices and says, "Okay, you're here at the stairs to the dungeon, going down." I hated that. But it did forestall the players from going into a tailspin of analysis.

Keep reading... the group finally heads back out and is ambushed on the road!

A while ago I started asking the rhetorical question, "What's this game about?" in roleplaying games. Except it's not just a rhetorical question. It's a real question... and a very pertinent one.

What's this game about? The question came to me as a prompt for RPGs when I started fixing a problem with game focus in my own games a few years ago. My focus problem was buying and selling things. As in, my games tended to get bogged down when the PCs were buying and selling stuff. Partly this is a hard-to-escape consequence of playing rules-heavy games like D&D. Gear matters, gear has prices, and money matters, too. Ergo the GM can spend a lot of time adjudicating situations where players are striving to have their characters maximize what they get while minimizing what they spend.

What's this game about? Is it really about tracking the size of your coin purse and roleplaying interactions with merchants? Remember that just because the game rules may tilt in that direction— and may even make it hard to escape— that doesn't mean you have to play it that way.

What's this game about? Sure, it's easy to get bogged down in making rolls and roleplaying interactions every time a player says, "Ooh! I'm going to see if there's any magic stuff for sale in this town!" But pause and ask yourself: what do you want the game to be about? Do the GM and players really want to spend a lot of their valuable time together at the table roleplaying going shopping?

What's this game about? That was the clarifying question, the rhetorical prompt, that struck me when I decided to fix the going-shopping problem in my own games. A few of my players had pissed and moaned over the years, "We're spending too much time on shopping." Phrased as a negative like that it's not very helpful. And phrased as a complaint against what the GM's doing it engenders more negative/defensive reactions than constructive responses. But "What's this game about?" is an open-ended, non-judgemental question. It invites a constructive, positive answers.

What's this game about? "It's about exploring the unknown, matching our wits and skills against various challenges, having fun dicing combats, and trading witty one-liners along the way," the group might agree. Great! Then: "So, how do we spend more time doing that and less time on bookkeeping things like counting coins and encumbrance?"

Next in this series: Taking it Easy with Encumbrance in D&D

A few weeks ago I read a good blog in the roleplaying games blog Gnome Stew, entitled Entertainment is Key (Nov. 2023). It's about how roleplayers have different motivations to play and how a good game master (GM) strives to understand their goals to craft a playing experience that's entertaining for everyone. It got me thinking about the successes and failures of group entertainment in the games I've played and a few techniques that help tilt the game toward the former rather than the latter.

Roleplayers have different ideas of entertainment (image by Sean Budanio)

Roleplayers have different ideas of entertainment (image by Sean Budanio)

The first thing to recognize is that gamers do have different expectations of what to get out of the game. Some are looking for high fantasy storytelling, some are looking to crush every opponent, and some just want to play everything for laughs. I've seen games struggle and occasionally fail because the players want things that are too dissimilar.

The second thing to understand is that trying to stitch together a game around conflicting interests is not the way it has to be. You can elicit players’ ideas of enjoyment, align the game to them, and ensure they fit with each other. For me this is an indispensible part of Session Zero.

I’ve found many other GMs regard Session Zero merely as a chance to align on what game system we’ll play, what our character classes are, and check that we’ve constructed our characters per the rules. To me this is only part of Session Zero. The other critical part is aligning on how we have fun with the game and with each other.

One tip I have for fellow GMs is not to make “What’s your idea of fun?” an open ended question. That’s where you’ll get a lot of vague or confused answers. I recommend instead you start by outlining the broad strokes of how you’ve designed your game. Then invite the players to identify where, within that range, they find it most enjoyable to play.

For example, in the City of the Dead game I've been running recently I pointed out in our Session Zero that the game system I’d chosen is on the “crunchier” end of the spectrum (rules-heavy D&D) because working the rules and rolling dice to determine outcomes is fun for me— up to a certain point. Then I asked the players each to weigh in on how far they liked to take letting the mechanics determine the story vs. the story determine the story. We quickly reached a consensus on how we'd enjoy playing this game. Note, if I'd asked an open ended question I probably would have gotten 5 disparate answers, but by starting with an outline and asking the group to choose where the center is, we converged on a mutually satisfying answer much faster.

D&D players always SAY they want more politics and intrigue...

D&D players always SAY they want more politics and intrigue...

A second tip for fellow GMs is to believe what your players tell you but also not believe it. Watch how they act in the game to determine whether they’re really having fun! I’ve seen this repeatedly with respect to the question, “Do you like a combat heavy game vs. roleplaying heavy?”

Players so often tell me they want more roleplaying, more courtly intrigue, etc., versus hack-and-slash… yet repeatedly when I create role-playing heavy stories they lean away from engaging them, look bored, and grumble about how they’ve “done nothing” all session since there were no combats. So yes, definitely talk about what players want from the game up front, but keep an eye on where & how they're engaging as you go, too.

Hosting a dinner party is tough nowadays. I don't just mean the effort of shopping for food, cleaning the house, preparing food, and cleaning up afterwards. Even just planning the menu is getting difficult. So many people have food allergies nowadays that if you get 2-3 people with different no-can-do lists it's hard to assembly a reasonable sized menu that offers enough choices for everyone.

BTW I don't dispute people's food allergies. Many folks out there observe that food allergies "didn't used to be" so common and therefore conclude that they're fake. I instead attribute the apparent increase to better awareness of medical conditions today versus years ago. I believe the same proportion of people have always had various allergies or sensitivities but now more of them know they have such conditions.

For example, one of my college roommates learned a few years after graduation that he's lactose intolerant. "When did that start?" I asked. "You always loved splitting a pizza with me." "I've probably always had it," he explained. "I just thought I had a weak stomach. Now I know why."

For a small gathering we hosted Saturday night there were already competing allergies and religious restrictions in play, even with just a few people attending. The menu was quickly whittled down to, "No meat, no dairy, no eggs." Ugh, what's left? I grumbled silently.

Cutting across the issue of planning a menu around different people's limitations is the matter of how hosts view their responsibility for entertaining guests. At one end of the spectrum people take the attitude of, "Our house, our menu, and guests are rude if they don't eat all of it and say thank-you." At the other end of the spectrum are hosts who bend over backward to accommodate a guest, setting the entire menu around pleasing a single person even if the hosts and their family find it unsatisfying. From reading online discussions of hosting problems it seems not uncommon to find people operating at either of these extremes.

In the lead up to Saturday's party I felt we were reaching the bend-over-backwards extreme. My partner had quickly negotiated a menu with the guests that respected all of their needs— including the tough restrictions of a person who told us he might not even be able to attend, and if he did come, it would be hours late. Finally I told my partner on Saturday after lunch that I was probably going to eat nothing at dinner. In my own house. I was even considering no-showing my own party because I found nothing on restrictive menu appealing to eat.

Fortunately it didn't come to that. My partner agreed to relax some of the restrictions when she realized how dissatisfied I was. I got her to recognize that when we're entertaining people with limitations we don't have to make everything on the table fit everyone's limits simultaneously. At the same time, of course, we're not going to tell a guest, "Hey, we heard you can't eat X, so here's the one thing with no X in it for you!" There's a happy middle ground in making sure that each person has at least a few food options they can enjoy.

A problem that's existed in roleplaying games nearly as long as there have been roleplaying games is firewalling player knowledge from character knowledge. Part of the fun challenge in playing the characters is dealing with the unknown and the surprises it deals. But what if the players already know all the answers, either from having encountered them in previous games or simply by studying the various rulebooks?

Suppose the GM narrates this dangerous creature wading in to combat:

A 9 foot tall creature comes crashing through the forest. It walks erect but slightly hunched over, its gangling arms swinging low to the ground. Rubbery green skin covers its muscular body. It shows no fear or hesitation as it lopes straight up to you, letting out a hoarse roar showing a mouth full of sharp teeth and raising its oversized hands with fingers ending in sharp claws to attack.

This is a troll. But do the characters know it's a troll? (Assume the word "Troll" is not painted on the grass at its feet. 😂) Moreover, do the characters know that trolls quickly regenerate damage from ordinary weapons and spells, and are only truly vulnerable to fire and acid? High level character likely would but lower level characters would not.

Sadly a lot of the time in gaming an experienced player will shout out, "It's a troll! Remember it regenerates and we need to kill it with fire or acid!" because they're familiar with trolls— from somewhere else.

This is a firewall violation. The players took experience they have and imparted it on their characters who were supposed to earn it the hard way.

It's disappointing when this happens. One player's thoughtless or selfish act sucks all the drama out of the scenario. Suddenly the characters know exactly what to do to overcome a challenge. They go about it with robotic precision instead of having to figure it by trial and error and their own wits.

On the other hand, when players have to figure out stuff like this in character it's glorious cooperative storytelling.

Years ago I ran a game with a small group where all of the players either didn't know what trolls can do or did a great job pretending. Their characters hacked the troll to bits and left it for dead at the edge of their camp... only for it to rise, at full health, a minute later and attack them again! Then they killed it a second time, and it came back for a third attack! By then the characters saw enough clues provided— the troll had been hit by fire or acid a few times, and those wounds conspicuously weren't healting— that they figured it out. The game was so dramatic that way, without some know-it-all blurting out the surprising plot twist right at the start.

The group I've been playing my City of the Dead game with has been pretty good about firewalling. When they have out-of-character knowledge about a situation they either keep it to themselves— and try not to let in influence their actions— or they ask me. "Hey, what does my character know about this monster/spell/object/etc.?"

I'm glad they ask, because I've already planned to tell them! They're of a level (6th) where it's fair that they know some stuff about the mysteries of the world. Plus, when I created these pre-gen characters I made sure to give them all one or more Knowledge skills. This was intentional on my part so I could allow them the ability to piece together and predict, to a fun extent, what's happening in the game.

When they encountered a troll in Session 1, for example, I advised one of the players that his character knew exactly what it was. He had the right background to have learned about trolls from mentors and peers even if he hadn't seen one personally. I passed him a note explaining what his character would know. He got to share that knowledge in-character with the rest of the group, increasing their appreciation for him as a uniquely valuable member of the team.

BTW my note passing technique has had an unexpected benefit. Now instead of players competing to be seen as the smartest (i.e., most know-it-all) player at the table by blurting out un-firewalled knowledge, they count coup by who receives the most notes demonstrating that their character had important insights to share. 🤣

Woohoo, I'm playing D&D again! Last night we managed to kick off our short term game. It was the first time in, like, 8 weeks nobody was sick or stuck axle-deep in mud. And we mapped out five Fridays in the next two months we can play!

Last night was only a session zero so no dice rolling. We players got aligned on the story, the setting, a group of characters that will go through it, and how we look to have fun doing that together. With the group of players I chose for this game that wasn't too hard. We're all pragmatic players who like telling a story with a set of characters that basically work together instead of trying to break the game, steal from each other, or just being assholes (to other players) for fun.

One thing I liked, and which worked way better than I anticipated, was that the players quickly settled into the pre-generated characters I'd built. I was clear up front that picking a pregen wasn't required; I made them as examples and time-savers vs. creating characters from scratch for this mini-campaign. But I also designed them as good characters, with well thought out skills and interesting bits of backstory. The players not only all picked from my pre-gens but seemed satisfied that they'd gotten their top choice. I'm looking forward to Session One!

I said several days ago I wasn't going to write a lot of blogs about Band of Brothers. "Maybe two," I thought to myself. That contrasts with the Chernobyl miniseries, about which I've written sixteen blogs— plus possibly one more to come! I'm glad I didn't say "Maybe two" out loud or commit it to writing because now that I've started writing about the series— see my initial blog entry about the series from yesterday— I realize that I've got a lot more to say about it than I initially thought. BoB is twice as many episodes as Chernobyl... I'm absolutely not expecting this to run to 32 entries!

This blog is about Ep. 1 in series, "Currahee". It tells the tale of the soliders of Easy Company from their training as paratroopers through their staging in England up to the point where they board aircraft for Operation Overlord— i.e., D-Day. As I began to draft blogs about the series I mused that the training montage stretched over 2 or 3 episodes and thus got a bit boring. Nope, it's all in one episode. That's part of how I realized I'd have more to write about than I initially thought.

Lt. Sobel (David Schwimmer) dresses down soliders in Band of Brothers Ep. 1 (2001)

Lt. Sobel (David Schwimmer) dresses down soliders in Band of Brothers Ep. 1 (2001)

The main character in this episode is Captain Sobel, played by David Schwimmer (pictured). He's the main character in the sense that he's the focal point of the episode, as the company commander and drill instructor training the men to be elite soldiers. In the narrative sense, though, he's not the main character... he's the villain.

Sobel is an unnecessarily harsh task master, constantly punishing the soldiers for the smallest infractions, real or imagined. Even worse, the soldiers realize as their deployment becomes imminent, Sobel will be a terrible battlefield commander. In war-game exercises it's clear that Sobel can't read maps or navigate in the field, can't think on his feet, and dismisses helpful advice from his subordinates. The non-commissioned officers in his company meet secretly and agree that if he leads them into war, they'll all die. The noncoms stage a mutiny of sorts. The regiment commander, Col. Sink, punishes two of the noncoms but realizes that ultimately he can't punish them all. He sidelines Sobel to a training role and assigns the company a new commander.

As I began watching BoB I groaned through a lot of this episode. "Oh, look, it's the sadistic-drill-instructor trope again, Bo-o-oring!" But in retrospect I recognized it's more than just a trope. There's a deeper story element there... and a teachable lesson, too.

The deeper story element is that Capt. Sobel's overly harsh command not only molded the men into capable soldiers but gave them additional reason to bond. They bonded with each other over the shared adversity. ...And not just the adversity of training being hard because it needed to be, but the adversity of dealing with a hated superior who was way harder than he needed to be— and later, life-threateningly incompetent.

The teachable lesson here is about the difference between leadership and command. In an authoritarian system like the military, any halfway intelligent person with a rank on their uniform can command. Subordinates do what you tell them because they pretty much have to. The system invests the commander with enormous power to deal with those who don't. But leadership is different from command. Leadership is when you not only tell subordinates what to do but inspire them to do it well.

Yes, you can make subordinates do things by commanding them. You can use fear of consequences as a motivator, as Capt. Sobel does. But you don't get the best results out of people that way. They'll do things only well enough to avoid the your wrath. People who are inspired will find ways to do things better. They'll offer helpful suggestions... where those rules by fear are afraid to speak up. Those who are led, as opposed to commanded, see the leader's success as their own. Meanwhile, those who are ruled by fear rather than respect ultimately look to dig a pit under their commander.

Keep reading: Band of Brothers Ep. 2: Day of Days

Several months ago I wondered if I'd forgotten "how to people". The need to socially distance during the Coronavirus pandemic drastically cut the amount of interaction we all had with other people, particularly in person interaction. Being now 2 years on from that it makes sense that we'd have lost some of the skill and habituation to do it. For sure I seek social time with other people less now than I did before the world changed. Lately I've been considering an alternate explanation, though. It's not that I "forgot how to people"; it's that I've lost patience for dealing with people who suck.

The enforced isolation of the pandemic accustomed me to managing with less social interaction. As things opened back up and I could socialize more I found I didn't really care to. And it's not that I lost interest in socializing. It's that I realized a lot of the people I'd been spending time with were because I felt I had to. They were acquaintances but not friends. Or they were old friends who'd ceased ~~having value~~ being friends. Or they were strangers who were dull or, worse, said obnoxious or offensive things. Prior to the pandemic I'd stick with the conversation out of a sense of politeness. But through the pandemic I found I could just walk away.

I walk away from bad conversations now. I hang up on social zoom chats when they're dull or someone starts acting like an asshole and won't stop when asked, once, kindly. I hang up on phone calls. I'm willing to literally walk away from in-person gatherings. I don't care to "take the good with the bad" anymore. I'll try getting the "good" later, without the bad people around. And if the good people are really any good, they'll understand.

Update: I replaced the phrase "having value" in the second paragraph because it's problematic. It implies to many readers that I view friendship transactionally, as in, "We're friends to the extent that you deliver things of value to me." The thing of value I was talking about is time— as in Warren Buffet's famous advice that the most value thing one person gives another in a relationship is their time. Old friends who are unwilling to spend time with me anymore or who put preconditions on it, such as "If you want to talk to me join up on this new social media app and read my pinned posts first, then we'll talk," are no longer behaving as friends. Friends don't require an application for continued friendship.

Day 0 of this sales kickoff (SKO) went pretty easy. I landed in Las Vegas after 2pm, got to my hotel by 3pm, and largely took it easy until just after 6. Then there was a reception at 6:30 on one of the decks outside.

Doing a meet-and-greet with people in person was like exercising and old muscle that hasn't been used much lately. In fact basically not in... 2 years, 2 weeks, and 2 days. In that time a lot of new people have joined my company. And I've seen many of them... but only in 2D. In 3D some of them look different!

For example, my boss is 6'5". He does not look that tall on camera. He positions his camera in his home office in such a way that it makes him look of average height, about 5'11".

Meanwhile one of the VPs in our organization positions his camera in the opposite fashion, making him look an imposing 6'2"... with a haughty and abrasive communication style. He's actually about 5'5". Seeing him in person, in 3D, totally changed my perspective on him. Now I see him as a yappy little dog, a person who projects his insecurity by barking constantly. I noticed a lot of other people recalibrating around him, too. He grabbed a microphone to speak and couldn't even project his voice with the help of a microphone. People ignored him instead of kow-towing to him. I wonder if he'll even last 6 more months now.

Our reception wound down at 9pm. In 24/7 Las Vegas that seems lame but it's actually a good thing. Some people see these SKO events as boondoggles, opportunities to live it up with drinking, gambling, dancing, etc. to all hours of the morning. But the fact, is they're more like timed rallies.

With 12+ hours a day of training and other events that you have to be "on" for, there isn't room for dragging yourself back to the hotel in the not-so-wee hours of the morning and then working through a raging hangover the next day. It's better you get yourself to bed before midnight each night— and not stinking drunk— so you can be ready for a full workday the next morning beginning at 7am.

Next: Mostly Maskless in Vegas

One of the blogs I follow is about roleplaying games (RPGs), called Gnome Stew. In a recent entry one of the "gnomes" wrote about players checking their phones, etc. during a game. For context, this would be at table-top RPGs (TTRPGs), where use of electronic devices and their potential for disruption has been a topic of debate over the past several years.

The author of that blog presented both pros and cons for device usage in TTRPGs. I appreciate that because most writing on the topic has been very one-sided. When small devices became common enough— and powerful enough— that players using them at the table became a big discussion in the TTRPG community, most writers took a paternalistic, just-say-no approach.

The urge behind making "No electronics" a house rule is understandable. Phones, tablets, etc. used inappropriately during games are huge distractions. Players who descend into watching YouTube videos or reading news or social media feeds mentally dropping out from the game. Even worse is when they distract others, too, e.g. by laughing out loud at the cat videos they're watching or interrupting others' roleplay to shout, "OMG, did you hear about what the {president, other party leader, governor, pop star of the week} just said?!?!"

Even if all you see are the negatives of device usage, setting a policy like a "Thou shalt not" commandment will not work with adult players. Much of the advice in recent years has worded as a parent would browbeat and punish a misbehaving child.

And the truth is that phones, tablets, and small laptops are more than just tools of distraction. They're enormous helps when used well. I can't imagine sitting down for a game anymore without a character sheet open in one window and background documents, SRDs, and rules PDFs queued up in various tabs. I frankly roll my eyes at players who are high-tech in other aspects of their lives yet sit down at my gaming table with a rat's nest of faded papers they can't their own Hit Points in without loudly rummaging around for 15 seconds. Nowadays it's like, if you don't have a device with you to organize and access information, you're not prepared.

Of course, the negatives of devices are real. Those examples I gave above about cat videos and blurting out outrageous headlines in the middle of a game aren't hypothetical or exaggerated examples; they've all happened at my gaming table. Devices are tools, and tools can be used for good or ill. So how do you limit the ill?

I find these types of disruptions are best handled not with rules specific to device usage but when treated like any other form of disruption. It's worth remembering that not all disruptions are device-based. TTRPGs have always struggled with distractions such as players wanting to catch up with each other before starting the game. Then, too, there’s the challenge of how much "meta" talk / BSing there is in the game vs. deep roleplaying. And how to manage snack/meal breaks without trainwrecking the session too badly is practically an art form. The best approach is to build a consensus among the players about how and how much of these to allow while keeping the game fun for all.

Crossposts: https://canyonwalker.livejournal.com/990055.html

In the hours after I rage-quit a roleplaying game Sunday evening I asked myself whether what I did was reasonable. As I noted in that blog, this is the third time I've quit, or been ready to quit, a game in frustration over other players' behavior this year. (There's actually a fourth time I probably would have quit a game except the problem player, "Braz", quit first.) Am I being too picky? Have I gotten overly picky now versus years ago? Am I the problem player?

I'll answer these one at a time.

Q: Am I being too picky?
A: No. It's reasonable to expect respect and cooperation.

Roleplaying games aren't just about "playing a role". They're about playing a role in tandem with other players and to solve shared goals. A person who doesn't play well with others, or picks a role that doesn't play well with others, is breaking the game's implicit contract. To put it more plainly, the game is about everyone having fun. When someone chooses for themself a form of fun that inherently makes the game less fun for others, they're being a jerk. It's 100% appropriate for others to admonish them about that and be ready to leave (or tell the problem person to leave) if it doesn't stop.

Q: Have I gotten grumpy in my old age?
A: Mostly No. I quit games when I was younger, too.

So I've quit or thought about quitting a lot of games this year. This is also a year when I've made a point of trying a lot of new games. The last time I did that was more than 20 years ago, before I got my own long-term game going. Back then I tried and left a number of games, too. For example, one I ran fell apart during the second session because two of the players simply would not take the game seriously. Another my wife I and left after one session because the GM was a jerk who invited us to create characters with interesting backstories then contradicted everything we created.

I answered Mostly No above, BTW, because when I was a lot younger, in high school, there were games I should have quit but didn't. For example, I played for a few years with a GM who was very arrogant. He'd kill off our characters anytime we did something he didn't like. I stuck with that group, though, because most of my friends were in it, because I wanted badly enough to play that I tolerated the disrespect, and because at that age I hadn't developed the strength of my convictions in demanding mutual respect and balanced relationships.

Q: If I am the only one objecting to what happens in a game, does that make me the problem player?
A: No.

It may seem a bit odd that in all of these recent games everybody was there while the problems were occurring yet I was the only person who objected. (Except for the situation with "Braz"; Hawk spoke up on that one.) What does it mean that I'm the only one who registered an objection most of the time?

"Think about the common factor across all of your failed relationships," some people say. "It's you. That means you are the problem!"

Yeah, that's what bullies say. Bullies and gaslighters. Fuck that noise.

The fact is that a lot of times in games— and in many other areas of life, too— people don't speak up when they see something wrong. They fear disagreement. They fear social disapproval for "rocking the boat". Or, especially in the gaming world, they suffer the trap I described being in when I was younger, above— lack of self confidence and the feeling that playing a bad game is better than playing no game. The fact that other people may be willing to put up with shit for their own reasons does not invalidate my reasons for choosing not to put up with it.

Crossposts: https://canyonwalker.livejournal.com/966828.html

A few weeks ago I blogged "D&D: New Rules, New Players, Same Old Problems". I wrote about a challenge with a player who hogged the spotlight and a GM who supported it. (FWIW, spotlight-hogging is a common enough issue in roleplaying games, though this case was more severe than most— particularly with how the GM showed favoritism.) I wrote the blog under a broad, generic title because that wasn't the only new-day-same-old-problems issue on my mind at the time. Another problem-player problem was cropping up in a second game at Session Zero stage at the time.

Thieves and "The Good Guys" Don't Mix

The problem with the player "Braz" (as I'll call him) began with him declaring that his character is a thief. ...Not just a character created with the "Thief" character class many game systems have, but actually a person who routinely steals things from others. This came after I asked a question to the group: "What's our moral center?" The group agreed, "We're the good guys."

The discussion about Braz playing a thief went back and forth for about 15 minutes. I won't relate all the twists and turns here as I don't want this to turn into a 1,000+ word essay. Suffice it to say this was a situation where the player was talking but not listening. It's impossible for the group to be "the good guys" when one member of the group expects to commit crimes against innocent people frequently and unrepentantly.

Admitting You're Bossy Doesn't Make it Okay

The next problem point arose with Braz declaring, "Just so you know, I like to do all the talking in roleplaying situations."

In any group of players it naturally happens that some are more forward than others in driving dialogue. That's fine... to an extent. Those who like to talk have got to share the spotlight with others. To merely declare that you're going to be a spotlight hog does not make it okay to be a spotlight hog. And again, he was not discussing this point with us, he was informing us.

So... This is Your Fantasy (Mary Sue)

Later in the session we looked at art to represent our characters. "I like this one," Braz said, introducing an icon. "He's holding a cigarette. I smoke, so he should smoke, too."

And there it was. Mary Sue. ...Or Mary's male counterpart, Marty Stu.

That seemingly throwaway tiny bit of information was the thread that tied everything together. Braz was set on playing a fantasy version of himself. A version of himself with all of his own habits, except he's a budding crime boss.

Look, there's nothing wrong with defining a fantasy character concept, even if it's based on yourself. It's literally called a fantasy roleplaying game. But it's a collaborative fantasy game. You've got to define a character that fits with the group, in the setting and in the plot, to tell a mutually satisfying shared story. If the rest of the group want to play "We're the good guys" and the GM's story plan assumes we're basically the good guys, your I'm-a-criminal-and-I'm-the-boss persona is in the wrong place. Go play Grand Theft Auto to act out that fantasy.

Where's the GM?

The game master (GM) had being staying out of the conversation among us players. I was of mixed minds about that. On the one hand I appreciated him giving us room to work things out as players. On the other hand I was growing frustrated that he wasn't providing guidance or supporting the idea of fair ground rules. A few times I'd directed questions to him about how challenging character concepts would fit in his setting or storyline. He dodged responsibility, giving vague non-answers like, "Well, there are different ways you can do it. [Full stop.]"

While I was dissatisfied with this Session Zero I was willing to go forward to the next step. Hawk was bothered enough, though, that she was on the verge of quitting. We spoke to the GM about it during a call for another game, when it was just the three of us online at that point.

"I don't know if Braz is going to make it," the GM said. He elaborated (when I asked), admitting that he didn't think Braz's character concept would work. He implied, though didn't commit, that he might even tell Braz certain things aren't okay for the group.

At that point I was reminded of a saying among seasoned travelers: "Don't take an idiot with you when you travel; you can pick one up when you arrive." Why are we bothering to take an idiot with us in our gaming group?

Crossposts: https://canyonwalker.livejournal.com/904848.html

Hawk and I have recently started branching out in D&D. We've both been playing the game for decades. In recent years, though, we've only played the long-term campaign I've been GMing. As the Coronavirus crisis has pushed roleplaying games mostly online— and online tools have gotten way better, necessity being the mother of invention— we've taken a new interest in trying other games and other groups. It's easier to solve the logistics of meeting new players & sitting down together when we're not limited by having to sit in the same room.

As we meet new players and try new games with them we find ourselves in old familiar territory. It recalls our experience from years ago, when we had just moved to this area and avidly sought new gaming groups. Sadly this familiar territory is not good territory. Back then we spent a solid year playing with various goofballs and jerks while trying enough people to find a set we truly enjoyed playing with. Today the game systems are new, the technology is new, and the players are new, but the human flaws we have to contend with are the same.

Recently we wrapped up a mini-campaign in D&D 5th Edition (not that the game system matters to this story). I had misgivings about the group from as early as our Session Zero. Three separate times I asked the GM a question about the setting, and Player 1— as I'll call him— interrupted to criticize my questions as unimportant or inappropriate. The GM did answer each of my questions but he did not admonish P1 to stop interrupting or to be more respectful.

It was evident there was going to be a challenging power dynamic in the group, where P1 considered himself the most important person in the room (hence the name "P1") and everybody else, including the GM, was content with his behavior. I knew I would have to either accept that or be ready to argue with him, repeatedly, to have fair say in the game. Frankly, I was on the edge of choosing to withdraw from the game at that point, during Session Zero. But, I figured, it's just a mini-campaign, 3-4 real sessions. I'd give it a chance to see how it goes.

There's a saying, "When someone shows you what kind of a person they are, believe them." Player 1's behavior as if he were the only important person in the game continued in subsequent adventuring sessions. Repeatedly he'd declare an action without consulting the rest of us. Worse, the GM supported his I'm-the-only-one-here attitude by allowing him to complete major solo actions before the rest of us could get a word in edgewise. It felt like P1 was playing an FPS and we were the AI bots supporting him.

I stuck with the game through all four sessions because... well, because it was only four sessions. I wanted to learn a new rules system and to practice being a player again after many years of only GMing. I decided I could put up with this guy's ego and casual disrespect for a short while.

The game wrapped recently, and there was discussion about what we could do next. The chat trailed off without a conclusion. That's fine with me; I doubt I'll want to play with that group again.

Crossposts: https://canyonwalker.livejournal.com/897798.html

Not long after Coronavirus became a global pandemic and everyone was told to practice social distancing a compromise was suggested that would allow some in-person contact with others: Bubbling. The idea was you could form a social bubble including, say, your family and another family.

Forming a Social Bubble during COVID-19

If you have kids you know they want to play with their friends. To stop them you'd have to keep them in the house most of the time and establish fairly draconian rules for when they're outside. Plus, it's not just kids. We adults need human contact, too. Pretty much all of us have people we'd appreciate visiting— a neighbor, a few close friends, relatives who live nearby, etc. So, the idea went, why fight human nature when you could work with it but just put some commonsense rules around it. The idea was, as long as you know who you're bubbling with and keep the bubble tight, you're not significantly increasing your risk of exposure to COVID-19.

The problem with bubbling is that keeping the bubble tight is way easier said than done. I thought about this when I first saw the concept months ago. Suppose you decide to bubble with your next door neighbor. The kids can play and the adults can enjoy picnics together. But who else is in each family's bubble? If the kids go to school or daycare, they're in a bubble with all those other kids... and their families... and whoever else those families bubble with. And the adults in your bubble? What if one's an essential worker with lots of close contact in their job? What if you have a brother who lives nearby with his family and you go to visit them every few weeks? What if your brother or his spouse is lax about masks and social distancing?

The Problem with Social Bubbles - They're Bigger than you Think!

The Problem with Social Bubbles - They're Bigger than you Think!

In short the problem with making a bubble is that it's pretty much never going to be a small bubble. You may think it's small, and as a simple concept it certainly starts small, but by the time you finish connecting overlapping circles of who interacts with whom, it's huge. And worse, it includes a lot of people you don't know and/or can't trust to behave responsibly in your bubble.

Crossposts: https://canyonwalker.livejournal.com/888379.html

In the world of roleplaying games there has always been an emphasis on narrative communication. The founding idea of roleplaying is that you're portraying a character. Ergo, you should speak as that character. You describe actions "you" take, and the Game master (GM) likewise describes what "you" experience. This in-character interaction is narrative communication.

There's also meta conversation, or meta-gaming as it's often called. This is when players talk about the game, as players, rather than as their characters. This has traditionally been regarded as weak gaming, a habit or crutch of people who lack sufficient creativity or simply "don't get it". This has had a big part in slowing acceptance of Session Zero, IMO.

Recall that Session Zero is about discussing how characters fit together, as a group, in the setting, and as protagonists in a shared story. This is obviously a meta discussion. Parts of it can be narrative, but parts of have to be meta. And that's where a lot of the objections from experienced gamers come from.

Example: Going Meta when Narrative Discussion Fails

Here's an example from back at the same time as my Batman and the Joker in the same party story. While I wasn't as adamant as I should have been back then about characters being able to work together, I was serious about working with players to develop backstories that a) tied them in to the rich world I had created and b) gave them reason to participate in the broad story arcs I'd crafted. My game was not going to be one of those, "So, you all meet in a tavern, 5 strangers who become instant friends, and you decide to go on an adventure...." (Yes, that sounds preposterous, but if you're an experienced gamer you know it's also literally been done about a million times.)

One player was refusing to participate in crafting a workable character backstory. He created a character that had no reason to work with the party and no reason to care about the plot. I took a narrative approach first. I offered, one at a time, 3 suggestions on character backstory that would lead him to meet the group and care about the plot. He shot down each one. Next, I asked him to offer his own idea, but he pointedly refused.

At this point I "went meta" and reminded him of a line similar to this one, which I've seen elsenet recently as a description relating to Session Zero:

“Part of participating in a group storytelling experience is to make a character that can tell a story with the group.”

The player was livid at my admonishment. He ridiculed the very premise, complaining it’s creatively limiting and a cheap oversimplification on the part of the GM to require characters that fit the group and the plot.

We went back-and-forth a few rounds on this. It was tough on me because this player was well respected in our community. Friends whose opinion I value considered him “Best. Storyteller. Ever.” I tried really hard to make it work. Long story short, though: I told him he was unreasonable and asked him to leave.

After several successful game sessions with the remaining players, one of them offered a different perspective. “He was pissed the group picked your game idea over his. He was going out of his way to be a jerk to you.”

Three Lessons Learned

My takeaway lessons from this were:

1) The meat of Session Zero— alignment of characters to the group, the story, and the setting— is important. Do not let anyone talk you out of this.

2) Try a narrative solution first... but do not be reluctant to address issues at the meta-game level if narrative attempts fail or sooner if a player seems uncooperative.

3) While meta-game communication can clear up lots of misunderstandings, sometimes it reveals a problem deeper than a mere misunderstanding— an expectations mismatch too wide to bridge, or a person operating in bad faith. It's your prerogative to exclude from your game people who don't and won't fit into it. You and all the other players will enjoy it better!

Crossposts: https://canyonwalker.livejournal.com/884012.html

When I wrote about the value of Session Zero in roleplaying games a few days ago I promised to share some examples of successes and failures. The other day I shared one example, Batman and the Joker in the same party. That was a downside example, illustrating what happens when you don't do a full Session Zero. Here are five more examples from my experience, some downside and some upside.

1) "We go to bed each night knowing we were the good guys that day." That was a statement of game theme the players in my group came up with after the Batman and the Joker debacle. There would be no more ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room of adventuring with people who spread chaos and fear or commit wanton crime. That's not to say the game is all rainbows and unicorns. As part of the discussion everyone acknowledged that there would be plenty of gray areas to deal with, including a) when people of genuinely good intent have opposing priorities or expectations, and b) how to function in societies where the rulers are harsh, corrupt, callously indifferent, or possibly just badly misinformed.

2) A shady background is okay, hurting teammates is not. The statement in example 1 is something a group that's basically Good (in the game mechanics of many roleplaying games) would say. What about a group that's Neutral? They'll have a lot more tolerance for a character with a shady background... possibly even a shady present. Imagine one of the team is a burglar whose skills are helpful when we need to sneak into a villain's lair. Maybe we don't care if they take thieving side jobs in between our missions. But we do care if either: a) they steal from us! Or b) a side job gets them in so much trouble we get hit in the blowback. I've seen both of these blow up games I've played in the past, so when I proposed to be a burglar in a recent Session Zero I put these issues on the table and got the players' buy-in.

3) Is anybody taking this seriously?! In the comments on my entry about the value of Session Zero two of my friends raised a common cause of failure in roleplaying games: players creating characters that are exclusively comic relief. Remember, the crux of Session Zero is to establish that the players can collaborate in telling a mutually satisfying story in the GM's setting. If everyone agrees they just want a short-lived slapstick comedy exercise then sure, go ahead and create clowns. But when there's any kind of serious plot line to resolve, dragging along a worthless clown makes the game un-fun for everybody else. That happened in a mini adventure I ran years ago. Despite having a Session Zero and agreeing on the storyline to resolve, two of the players created characters that were total jokes. One was an idiot loudmouth who bloviated nonstop, the second was a drunk who refused to take things seriously until too late. The other two players quit in frustration after the first session, and the game fell apart about an hour into the second session when the two idiots couldn't even stop being idiots long enough to win a winnable fight. It was a TPK (Total Party Kill).

4) The desert railroad. Up to this point the negative examples I've shared are of players choosing inapt characters. Can GMs screw up the game contract, too? Sure they can! In one game Hawk and I created a pair of big-city society hackers. We kept the GM in the loop and sought his advice. He approved. Then at the start of Session One he informed us that we were in a desert, didn't know where we were, had just been robbed of all our possessions, and even our nice clothes were in tatters. Through a number of narrative motions I determined that these weren't plot points. The GM didn't care about establishing why we went to the desert, or who robbed us, or how we might seek justice. The desert robbery was just a device to strip our characters of all the background we created and fit them neatly into predetermined slots for what would happen next. In roleplaying game lingo this is called railroading— as in, we'd been railroaded into a bad deal. Hawk and I quit after Session One.

5) The hayseed party. One of the most fun games I've played was a campaign Hawk ran that sadly didn't last more than about 8 sessions. (It fell apart due to work schedules.) What was memorable was that we all came to Session Zero with characters who were misfits. Generally a group can handle one character who's quirky or socially crippled, occasionally two characters... but what about when it's 5/5? It worked in this case because, unlike in the "Is anybody taking this seriously?!" example above, we aligned well in Session Zero. A) We made sure we had quirky-but-useful characters instead of pure clowns; B) we identified enough shared goals and values to want to work together within the envelope of the setting and storyline the GM created; and C) we agreed we'd have fun embracing the setbacks and complications our quirks would create along the way. "Uh-oh, it looks like everyone in this party has pronoun trouble," one player joked, referring to the fact all the characters talked like nut jobs or country bumpkins. "We're the hayseed party!" another quipped. "We met at the tractor pull," I added. "We were all peeing on the wall behind the snack stand."

Crossposts: https://canyonwalker.livejournal.com/883405.html

Profile

canyonwalker

July 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jul. 23rd, 2025 01:13 pm

Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Entries tagged with group dynamics

Feels Like the Old Days (F2F Meetings)

The Meeting

The After-Meeting

Trust in Role-Playing Games: Don't Be a Dick!

Trust & Promises in Role-Playing Games

Billionaire Tells Us Our Problem is "Envy"

City of the Dead, Session 7: Slow Heading Back Out

What's Your Role-Playing Game About?

How Players Have Fun in Role-Playing Games

Hosting a Dinner Party is Tough

Firewalling Player Knowledge from Character Knowledge

D&D!

Band of Brothers Ep. 1. Command vs. Leadership.

Less Patience for Sucky People

SKO Day 0: Seeing People in 3D

Electronics at the Gaming Table

Reflecting on Roleplaying Groups

D&D: New Rules, New Players, Same Old Problems (Part 2)