Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1116579What experiences were those?

1. Group #1 wanted a frontier setting which their characters were intimately tied with. 12-15 sessions in, 3 out of the 4 players binned their PCs for characters with no ties to the frontier town and wanted to explore the world.
2. Group #2 had a player who wanted to focus on the teenager aspect of being a teenage superhero. Spent most of the campaign on his tablet barring a budding romance with another teenager who had aspirations to be a fashion designer. Said player also got the rest of the group to dispatch/murder a group of sentient animal super villains when they were defeated.
3. Group #3 was allowed to blue book for a mature Bronze Age superhero campaign. Spent most of their bluebooks trying to engage in Iron Age shenanigans.
4. Group #4 and #5 were asked for setting elements that I would use. Actively avoided situations where they came up unless they were straightforward fights. Also proactively went against the sandbox aspects by simply choosing whatever low-hanging fruit was more or less put in front of them (despite having a backlog of more character-related situations they could have looked into instead).
5. Group #6 had 2 players really insistent on the tone of the campaign (it was going to be a more balanced affair, emphasizing weird adventure and secrecy among teenagers instead of the slice of life that they wanted). It ended up driving the other players batty to the point they quit or had to be removed and it made it impossible to acquire new players.

Due to this, my stance has been zero consideration of what players want and to focus on what is healthy for myself and the game overall.

This thread has gotten lots of good replies, even (or especially!) the ones I earlier thought I didn't want. I've slept on it and came to realize that you're right. It's my game, I'm the one wearing the big pants, and therefore I'm going to be making the final decisions. That is, after all, the job of the DM. TBQH I don't know where and why I'd lost my confidence; thank you for restoring it.

Nevertheless, the planning session will still be held; there are some things I don't have a firm stance on, at least not yet, so I feel it'll be beneficial to discuss them with the group.

Now to comment on some messages...

Quote from: Omega;1116508One thing to possibly discuss is how lethal or not you and they want the sessions to be. Meaning, how much of a safety net is there or not. Is dead Dead? ir is dead KOed and revivable? Or is dead a slow bleeding out and some hospital time if they live? What things are there to apply once a PC is dead? Spells? NPCs to take their place? NPCs to drag them to a healing location? Hostages?

Quite right. This will be added to my final list.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1116518If it's going to be a new game system, then ask about playstyle expectations. If you have players that expect minatures & grid combats and the game is primarily theater of the mind (or vice versa) then it can be an issue.

Thanks, this too will be discussed. Of course some systems will practically make the decision for us; no way am I going to play D&D 3e or Pathfinder without the grid.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1116525In other news, coaches make terrible athletes, and teachers make terrible students.

Yeah. Ever since I really got in to DMing I became a horrible player.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1116527In general, I find most players don't know what they want, but even if the players know what they want, there's zero guarantee the whole table is going to agree on all your questions.  What's your plan for when everybody answers the questions differently?

I'll be honest with you: I hadn't even considered that. But if they can't make a decision, I will.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1116527There's just too much work in GMing for any campaign that doesn't light your fire. For a campaign to work, the GM has to have the most passion for the setting because the GM has the burden of prep and creation. Prep takes hours of your free time and for those hours to feel well spent, the prep has to be fun for you.

I know this intimately. It is my hope that making the campaign design more communal will increase the passion levels of the players, because last time I sometimes felt like all the players weren't really engaged. And that hurt. (Maybe that's also worth discussing...)

Quote from: DeadUematsu;1116531Heck, GMs should just straight up run what they want.

The problem is I don't know what exactly I want to run. I don't have answers to all my own questions. I'm hoping the discussion will help me see clearly. Luckily I already know what I don't want to play.

Quote from: Trinculoisdead;1116567Ultimately, you're the engine that keeps this train moving. And if you get burnt out because the players chose to play a mecha-space game and you wanted to play dungeon crawls, then the game is going to fail.

This is a good point, although it's highly unlikely my and my players' tastes will differ quite as much as in your example. Plus I know how to say "no" if an idea doesn't please me.

Quote from: rawma;1116576Given that GMing does require a lot more effort than playing, it would be reasonable to give your preferences priority and keep veto power.

Yes, I see now that this is the way to go.

Quote from: rawma;1116576Anyone who finds the effort of GMing unrewarding unless they get to abuse their players, probably should not GM.

Agreed. The game should be fun for everyone; I don't want to play solo.

Quote from: Dave R;1116583Things I haven't done in a session 0 but should: [...] Generate a fantasy world and history using Dawn of Worlds.

Thanks! I hadn't heard of DoW before; I just read it and am now excited to try it. While I won't be making specific pitches as per your suggestion (it's not a bad idea, I just don't feel like preparing any pitches; if I knew exactly what I wanted to run, I wouldn't have made this topic to begin with!), I'm definitely going to suggest communal world creation to my players and hopefully they'll bite.

Quote from: Chris24601;1116593I often collaborate with my players when starting a new campaign; largely because it DOES take a bunch of work off my own shoulders.

This is also a big reason why I want to try this. Preparing for sessions by myself is hard enough work as it is; preparing a whole campaign can be a whole lot worse.

Thanks to everyone so far.

Just to add my 2p,
If you're going to run it, then you need to be happy with what's decided. You need to set the overall parameters, and then let the PCs "tweak" the finer details. I think the concept that a GM can let the players do much or even a little of the "prep" is a non-starter. Even if the players all manage to agree on similar campaign ideas, the GM is going to have to turn those into "reality". You can get some great ideas from the players (rule 2, dude!), but the GM has to turn those ideas into actual play. I fear you will be disappointed if you were hoping the players would make your job easier.

The rest of the advice you've received is pretty on the ball, IMNSHO.

In my experience, most players don't know what they want in the sense you are discussing it here.  (Exceptions are players that are also often GM's, though what a lot of those "players" want is "to be surprised."  That is, not have any direct input into the campaign.)  Below, I'll get back to what they do know.  Getting feedback out of players is work, often unrewarding work, but useful nonetheless.  But you've got to do some thinking and hedging on what they say, and instead understand what you can do that will satisfy their incoherent but real wants.

There are two reasons that doing a few campaign pitches works better:

1. It's a lot less stressful on the GM, and ensures that whatever is decided is something the GM will be happy to run.  As others have detailed above.
2. It gives the players a place to start to give you feedback, which makes it a lot easier for them to guess what they'll enjoy or not.

What players can tell you very accurately is what they liked and disliked in past campaigns.  They might also tell you things that they'd rather do instead.  If you take those things with a grain of salt, as just another way of saying what they liked and disliked, the comments will even be useful.  If a player tells you, for example, that the felt the last character didn't have enough customization options, you can take that to the bank.  If they tell you that because of that they'd be happier to play System X instead next time, you can bet that they have not thought through all the ramifications of playing System X.  More likely, what you'll get instead of either of those is a blanket statement that next campaign they'd prefer to play System X.  With a little digging you'll find that they want to play System X because of customization options, and from that you can infer the useful piece of information that they were dissatisfied with the options in the last character or three.  

Therefore, what I do instead of using Session Zero for those kind of collaborative sessions is ask the players what they like and dislike any odd moments we have--during breaks, meals, waiting for people to arrive, etc.  Based on the answers, I'll possibly introduce some new things in later sessions, and ask again.  By the time "new campaign" season rolls around, I've got a fairly good idea of which pitches will resonate.  As a bonus, players often truly do have multiple pitches that sound appealing to them.  By the time they've discussed the pitches among themselves, they've sold each other on a choice.  Meanwhile, the players that enjoy lots of surprises haven't heard details that are going to mess up that part of the game for them.

My advice, Morblot, is that if you don't know what to run then to put it off and more importantly don't let anyone influence your decision making. IME, something that someone else is positively enthusiastic to play might be a deflated balloon for you when it comes to actually prepping and running.

I have little advice to add to what has already been said more eloquently by others, but just to emphasize DeadUematsu's point: do NOT let yourself be cajoled into running a game you aren't just as excited about as they are. I have made the mistake before of running campaigns that were ideal fun for my players but not for me, and it doomed those games before they even began.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1116681I have little advice to add to what has already been said more eloquently by others, but just to emphasize DeadUematsu's point: do NOT let yourself be cajoled into running a game you aren't just as excited about as they are. I have made the mistake before of running campaigns that were ideal fun for my players but not for me, and it doomed those games before they even began.

By the same token, campaigns fall apart quick too if the players aren't all that enthused either (and not everyone lives somewhere that there's a large enough group to be picky... and before you say "play online" let me counter with; if you're not getting actual face time with friends, you may as well just play an MMO together... the defining trait of a TTRPG for me is that its a face-to-face social activity).

I suspect this is why 5e (i.e. everyone's second favorite edition of D&D) is actually so popular. It may not be anyone's first choice, but its a decent enough second choice that most people can be okay with it.

Quote from: Chris24601;1116687By the same token, campaigns fall apart quick too if the players aren't all that enthused either (and not everyone lives somewhere that there's a large enough group to be picky... and before you say "play online" let me counter with; if you're not getting actual face time with friends, you may as well just play an MMO together... the defining trait of a TTRPG for me is that its a face-to-face social activity).

I suspect this is why 5e (i.e. everyone's second favorite edition of D&D) is actually so popular. It may not be anyone's first choice, but its a decent enough second choice that most people can be okay with it.

True, it pays to be willing to compromise and aim for the happy middle ground. As I've mentioned elsewhere I am lucky to live in a roleplaying 'hot zone' so to speak so I rarely have trouble getting a group together for whatever I feel like running (most usually GURPS but I'm dabbling with the idea of running a Savage Worlds game or something to try it on for size; I usually find a campaign premise itself to be a harder sell than the game system), but generally I think you're right that (at least in the west) D&D is the most broadly accessible for the purpose of getting an actual game going. Your comment about playing online is sort of funny since D&D also has far and away the best VTT tools and plugins for those who do game online; I do agree FTF gaming is still a better experience by light years though regardless of what gadgets and doohickeys you're using.

I  agree with some here that soliciting player involvement in campaign decisions can sometimes be a double edged sword, since players often don't even know what they want and design by committee doesn't always work. So if you already have some idea of what you want, or have been waiting to try a particular setting for a while, sometimes you're better off prepping something and pitching the idea to players to see if they bite. I've wasted hours before trying to get players to make up their minds about what they want to play and giving them to much leeway in deciding what to play can easily lead to never reaching a consensus and not playing anything.

That being said, if you go for player corroboration something I've tried before that worked was something along the lines of this...

Quote from: Chris24601;1116593I often collaborate with my players when starting a new campaign; largely because it DOES take a bunch of work off my own shoulders.

I'm not a frustrated author with a vision that must be obeyed, nor am I stuck in some middle management job where GMing is my one chance to throw my weight around; I'm a guy who has fun doing improv and giving players enough rope to get themselves into trouble then quietly laughing to myself as they struggle to extricate themselves.

They group I play and run with most regularly has gotten excellent use out of "Dawn of Worlds" to turn devising the setting into a sort of mini-game. The main thing I like about it is that it ensures the players get to include things they actually care about, likely in relation to the character they want to play, without having full control over the entire setting. It also lets us skip things no one cares about, so its not overburdened with the entire kitchen sink of races. Our house rule is that the GM, by default, gets as many extra points for their turns as they desire, but in practice we've never had that invoked.

While intended for fantasy, its easy enough to adapt the actions and results to create a sci-fi setting. Just sub in planets for territory, interstellar civilizations for nations, etc.

...I didn't know about Dawn of Worlds specifically, but one time I got a random call from an old friend--after years of neither of us playing--to see if I could make it to his house the day after to play a quick session with a group he'd managed to scrounge together. I had no prep, no clue what to play since I hadn't played in ages, and less than a day to prep (plus stuff I had to do in the morning), so we ended up rolling a couple of quick random characters using the basic info in the AD&D 2e PHB. Then we cobbled together an improvised setting using everyone's character concepts and backgrounds to develop a general idea of different locations, races and stuff we needed to include in the world.

I scrawled a crude map working with what I was hearing from some of their backstories and added stuff of my own to fill in the blanks and add additional depth. Eventually I developed it further over the course of a few sessions, as more people showed up and the campaign progressed and redrew the map with more details, along with a MS Word document with some of the setting's details. All in all it was a fun experience and something I think could work, particularly if you're going for some gonzo stuff or don't take things too seriously.

I didn't even consider some of the stuff covered in Dawn of Worlds, which could be used to add further detail to the world building process, though, I have some concerns about the gamification of some elements, since it may get in the way of proper world building--shifting the focus to one-upping another player or having enough "points" to add something that would be cool to include in your world and should be included anyways. Still, it seems like a nice guide for ideas when engaging in collaborative world building.

From experience the problem is that more often than not. What a player asks for, and what it turns out they really want are not necessarily the same.

They might ask to play a merchant and own a shop. But end up all but ignoring it as they dig into political intrigue.
They might ask for political intrigue and courtly drama. But instead end up traveling as far from that as they can get on an ocean voyage battling pirates.
They might ask for an ocean voyage battling pirates. But instead settle into owning a shop and being a merchant.

Usually it is because the player has recently seen something that sparks an interest in playing that in a game. But then either get bored with it, find it isnt as glamorious as they thought, or get sidetracked with something that really gets their interest.

Another reason may be simply that getting what you want turns out to lack a certain element of mystery.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1116584Omnipotence doesn't mean "doesn't have to obey logic."

I am torn between being to know that logic is the ultimate omnipotence that even gods must obey, and being :eek: that I've wandered into theological arguments in two separate threads.

Let me revise my point to its limited form and no more: if the original poster as GM has the power to make all decisions as he wants, then he can make the decision to consult his players.

Ignore the haters, original poster!

Quote from: rawma;1116733I am torn between being to know that logic is the ultimate omnipotence that even gods must obey, and being :eek: that I've wandered into theological arguments in two separate threads.

Discussion of the attributes of omnipotent entities isn't theology, it's philosophy.

Omnipotence doesn't let you do things that are logically inconsistent. Simple as that. Investigating the bounds of what that might mean, exactly, may be a potentially interesting exercise, but I'm disinclined to thinking that such entities exist, so it's mostly academic. Might be useful for gaming, if you want to talk about entities that are - somehow - omnipotent, I suppose, but that's a mighty big can of worms, and something I'd personally prefer to avoid.

Having omnipotence as the end goal of a BBEG is probably a common trope, of course, but letting one succeed is most likely an extinction-level event, because the term pretty much implies that you can take any action that isn't logically inconsistent. Turn every sapient being into ducks, change the speed of light to 0, make fission impossible, and reverse the arrow of time? All within the realm of possibility, there (well... maybe not that last one, depending).

Make 2 + 2 = 5? Nope, sorry.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;1116736Discussion of the attributes of omnipotent entities isn't theology, it's philosophy.

Discussion of the attributes of God is theology, though, by definition.

Quote from: rawma;1116811Discussion of the attributes of God is theology, though, by definition.

:rolleyes:

If you're unable to recognize the distinction I was drawing, I don't see much point in continuing the conversation, anyway.

Theology started out as a branch of philosophy, so you both might be right. Though, the actual classification of the discipline of "theology" has been a subject of debate, since many Christian theologians disagree about whether theology should include a philosophical approach, cuz such analytical thinking can lead to "unorthodox" ideas that deviate from religious teachings, and evidently they want to keep their dogmas unexamined and intact. Personally I just think it's hair splitting. since any discussion of theological matters is bound to be philosophical in nature.