Hello.

After a short break from games I've decided to pick up my dice and start gamemastering again. Most of the players from my previous campaign will be returning, except for the one guy everyone ended up hating, and there are no new faces, so I decided to really let these people have a proper say about what kind of game they'd like me to run for them. I've booked a session zero (or maybe minus one) for next week, in which I plan to discuss this.

Thing is, I'm not quite sure what topics we should cover. Here's what I've been thinking of myself:

• Genre -- fantasy, scifi, horror...? Maybe a mix of some kind?
• Game world -- something ready-made, such as the Forgotten Realms or the Third Imperium, or something homebrewed?
• Theme -- exploring places to find people to kill and stuff to loot, or maybe instead focusing on the politics of some city? Or how about solving mysteries? Killing vampires while also trying to graduate high school?
• Freedom -- do they want me to write some epic plot for them to follow or are they content to make up their own goals in a more sandbox-like environment?
• Game system -- something complex or something light?
• Adherence to rules -- should we play by the rules as written or use them more as loose guidelines?
• Level of roleplaying -- the usual cardboard cutout characters with barely a name or maybe try to really create and play complex characters that differ from the players in some meaningful way?
• Player relations -- what should we do if the players end up having OOC problems with each other? Try to resolve issues by discussing them or just black die the offender?
• Don't go there -- any subjects the game should just avoid?

What would you add to the list or remove from it?

Quote from: Morblot;1116506What would you add to the list or remove from it?

Since you all allready know eachother one thing you can likely skip is laying down your particular playstyle rules.

One 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?

The setting and system can be a big factor.

If 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.

Are you getting paid? You don't sound like their GM. You sound like their employee.

Might as well ask them what individual meals you should prepare them and how they like their foot rubs.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1116522Are you getting paid? You don't sound like their GM. You sound like their employee.

Allowing the players to voice their opinions does not make me their slave. I don't play in other people's games that aren't to my taste, at least not for very long. Would it not then be hypocritical to expect my players to just blindly accept whatever I happen to come up with?

Quote from: Morblot;1116524I don't play in other people's games that aren't to my taste, at least not for very long.

That's why you're a DM, not a player.

In other news, coaches make terrible athletes, and teachers make terrible students.

QuoteWould it not then be hypocritical to expect my players to just blindly accept whatever I happen to come up with?

No. You are the DM. You wear the Viking Hat. Players are your bitches.

Maybe a new thread would be best for discussing the role of the GM in relation to the players. I'm looking for comments on my original post.

Quote from: Morblot;1116524Would it not then be hypocritical to expect my players to just blindly accept whatever I happen to come up with?

Not in the slightest.

If you are getting paid, then it makes sense the players get to dictate whatever they're paying for. But if you're doing all the GM heavy lifting for free and on your own time, then run what you want to run and the players choice is whether or not they want to play.

In 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?

My plan for new campaigns is very simple. I tell everybody what I'm excited about running. At best, I might give two choices for the campaign and I'll cast the deciding vote because I'm doing the work of the GM.

There'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.

Players just show up and play. The GM has to give up non-game free time to make the game time fun for everyone. Thus, the importance of the GM making the key decisions about the campaign.

I used to be in the camp of collaboration until I experienced GMing with more than a handful of groups. The mean of players IME makes deciding on a new campaign and involving them in that process on more than a superficial level counter-productive. Heck, GMs should just straight up run what they want.

Quote from: MorblotGenre -- fantasy, scifi, horror...? Maybe a mix of some kind?
 Game world -- something ready-made, such as the Forgotten Realms or the Third Imperium, or something homebrewed?
 Theme -- exploring places to find people to kill and stuff to loot, or maybe instead focusing on the politics of some city? Or how about solving mysteries? Killing vampires while also trying to graduate high school?
 Freedom -- do they want me to write some epic plot for them to follow or are they content to make up their own goals in a more sandbox-like environment?
 Game system -- something complex or something light?
Adherence to rules -- should we play by the rules as written or use them more as loose guidelines?
 Level of roleplaying -- the usual cardboard cutout characters with barely a name or maybe try to really create and play complex characters that differ from the players in some meaningful way?
 Player relations -- what should we do if the players end up having OOC problems with each other? Try to resolve issues by discussing them or just black die the offender?
Don't go there -- any subjects the game should just avoid?

If you don't have any preference either way, than I suppose it makes sense for a kind of vote from the players on the bolded questions.

The underlined is a fine thing to ask the players. You get a say on that as well.

The italicized are things that you have to decide for yourself. You are the rules arbiter, it is you who gets to decide which rules are relevant to the game. Addressing OOC problems is, unfortunately, another thing that you are primarily responsible for. Tell the players what you will do about problems. They must agree to this in order to play.

Ultimately, 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. I imagine that's why people are saying that it is the GM who has to answer the bold questions.

Different systems require different campaign-planning styles from the group. Dungeon crawls have zero planning required. Burning Wheel has at least one session, sometimes more, devoted entirely to creating a setting and characters together. Running pre-written modules requires nothing more than for the GM to have read it, and the players to agree to not fuck it up too bad. What I'm saying is that choosing a system is going to help steer these questions about roleplay and rules and "freedom".

Quote from: Morblot;1116506so I decided to really let these people have a proper say about what kind of game they'd like me to run for them.

So some posters insist you are able to -- indeed, MUST -- make any and all decisions as GM, except for that one. They are probably also of the opinion that God cannot create a rock to big for Him to lift, but is nonetheless omnipotent.

Given that GMing does require a lot more effort than playing, it would be reasonable to give your preferences priority and keep veto power. But your greater leverage is pretty much a given - just as any player can say "I don't want to play in that game", the GM can say "I don't want to run that game". The latter cancels the game entirely but the former doesn't as long as the group is willing to let those players go and still have enough to want to play.

Anyone who finds the effort of GMing unrewarding unless they get to abuse their players, probably should not GM.

QuoteI've booked a session zero (or maybe minus one) for next week, in which I plan to discuss this.

Thing is, I'm not quite sure what topics we should cover. Here's what I've been thinking of myself:

• Genre -- fantasy, scifi, horror...? Maybe a mix of some kind?
• Game world -- something ready-made, such as the Forgotten Realms or the Third Imperium, or something homebrewed?
• Theme -- exploring places to find people to kill and stuff to loot, or maybe instead focusing on the politics of some city? Or how about solving mysteries? Killing vampires while also trying to graduate high school?
• Freedom -- do they want me to write some epic plot for them to follow or are they content to make up their own goals in a more sandbox-like environment?
• Game system -- something complex or something light?
• Adherence to rules -- should we play by the rules as written or use them more as loose guidelines?
• Level of roleplaying -- the usual cardboard cutout characters with barely a name or maybe try to really create and play complex characters that differ from the players in some meaningful way?
• Player relations -- what should we do if the players end up having OOC problems with each other? Try to resolve issues by discussing them or just black die the offender?
• Don't go there -- any subjects the game should just avoid?

What would you add to the list or remove from it?

I would not remove any of these, although for my own games I would already decide or know the answer to some or many of these (from knowledge of my own preferences and the players, if I've played with them that much).

I would add "how deadly" as Omega suggests. Also, you might already know the answer or not want to put it to the players, but I would add "How serious do you want the game to be, on a scale from gonzo/fourth-wall-broken to never out-of-character?"

Quote from: DeadUematsu;1116531I used to be in the camp of collaboration until I experienced GMing with more than a handful of groups. The mean of players IME makes deciding on a new campaign and involving them in that process on more than a superficial level counter-productive. Heck, GMs should just straight up run what they want.

What experiences were those?

Typically what I do when I'm prepping a campaign is pitch a rough concept to players.  I form a group out of people who are positively interested in the game pitch.  If I later find out someone just wanted to get their feet under the table and is trying to get me or the other players to make a switch on the order of, say, changing a Traveller game to Starfinder (or any similar change to concept or setting) I drop them.  Conversely, if someone sits it out because the game pitch isn't their thing, I make sure to invite them to the next campaign because I know they'll be on board if they do play.

I do all this not because I have a Viking hat GMing style once play starts, or because it's my way or the highway.  I do it because consensus is a terrible way to generate a campaign that's actually fun for everyone.  You would think it would be, because everyone gets a vote, but that's not how it works out.  You end up meeting in the middle on several different dimensions.  Serious versus jokey, epic versus street level, followers and rulership versus player characters only, any number of things where one extreme or the other might be appropriate to a campaign concept, but you end up in the middle.  Or if not literally in the middle, incorporating wildly unrelated requests from 4-5 different people.

That being said...

Quote from: Morblot;1116506What would you add to the list or remove from it?

I would remove everything from that list.  I would prepare pitches for 3-4 coherent campaign concepts that you yourself are positively interested in running, AND that you might guess would interest some of your players since you know them, and ask for a vote.

Things I have done in session 0's:
Pitch a single-clan game in Legend of the 5 Rings.  Hold a secret ballot for what clan to play - I didn't vote.  Rolled with what the players voted for.
Generated a noble house for the players to be retainers and lower ranking members of, using the rules in A Song of Ice and Fire rpg (despite running the game in another system).
Generated characters, obviously.  Ask the players why they're adventuring together, and what connections they have to other player characters.  Do not start play until this answered, even if it's only in brief.
Ask for NPCs from their background.  Daimyo, sensei, and immediate family were common for L5R, but can be more general for other games.  Names and short sentences preferred over lengthy stories.  The shorter it is the more likely I am to remember and use it.  Don't just screw them over by holding their family hostage, make it positive, though in some systems very positive can require a point expenditure rather than just writing down "my father is the daimyo".
Make sure player characters have roles beyond their class role.  In a clan game, what their position is (scribe, executioner, spare heir, etc.)  In a Traveller campaign, what job they have on ship (pilot, mechanic, steward, deckhand/working passage if they don't have any obvious ship skills).  If they can't come up with one or agree to any of several suggestions, that's a sign we have a problem.  "I'm the muscle/comic relief/fish out of water" is not an acceptable position/job, it's more something you overlay on a nominal position.
Run a sample combat.
Things I haven't done in a session 0 but should:
Run a sample combat, using pre-gens, and ending in a TPK (likely, unless they surprise me).  Have the party run across the aftermath of that later in play with their own characters.
Generate a fantasy world and history using Dawn of Worlds.  Go away for a month, develop a setting and custom classes based on the players choices, run that in D&D (or whatever seems appropriate).

Quote from: rawma;1116576They are probably also of the opinion that God cannot create a rock to big for Him to lift, but is nonetheless omnipotent.

Omnipotence doesn't mean "doesn't have to obey logic."

An omnipotent entity can do anything that is logically consistent. An omnipotent entity would presumably, if extended, be able to lift any arbitrary amount of weight. Therefore a rock heavy enough to be too heavy to be lifted by an entity that can lift "any weight" is literally incapable of existence, because it is a logical contradiction.

I 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.