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Malin doesnāt run a session zero
and I couldnāt disagree more.
Now, I do a session zero maybeā¦ a third of the time? Two-fifths? Itās hard to say because itās increasingly often. Itās not a hard and fast rule but itās just often been more helpful than not.
Hereās an overview of the points I wanna address specifically:
To the extent that thereās other stuff, go read the original article.
Iāll do these backwards, last to first, so I can save the serious stuff for last.
Also, this post gets into some themes beyond what's normally appropriate on here, so skip this one until you can steel yourself in a safe & comfy environment.
āFenestra has a dark fantasy feel, and the campaign structure encourages exploration.ā [ā¦] People should make characters in session 1 [ā¦] backstories in BIND is an in-game system.
This is session zero.
You can call it session one, thatās fine, Iām doing my best to honor my vow to never argue semantics. You can take what I call a session zero and call that a session one, thatās fine.
But thatās a pretty weaksauce argument against a session zero. It comes across as merely a Dijkstra style arguing for whether indexing starts at one or zero?
When I donāt do a session zero, when I just start the campaign at session one, that means players come with characters (using pregens if they have to) or weāre playing a game that doesnāt have characters, like Microscope Chronicle.
Making characters at the actual table actually togetherāthatās like the defining feature of a session zero!
Itās also an opportunity to go over rules, house rules, social contract etc. For example, can characters die? Do replacement characters start at level one or at party level? Etc. Should the GM fudge? Etc. According to polls, most players donāt want their GM to fudge and most GMs do fudge, so thatās obviously something you might wanna talk about. (Some games just flat out don't work without fudging; I've hacked my game a lot so it works without fudging, which I never do.)
āThe campaign structure encourages explorationā is typical of the stuff that causes people to recommend a session zero, heck, thatās a lot more explicit about the setup than I usually am!
I already have an essay about this.
I agree that it can be kind of weird to talk about āsafetyā. If a knitting group or a bowling team would start talking about safe words and triggers, most people would probably be looking for the exit.
(But Vampire: the Masquerade is no walk in the park and it's one game I'd say merit at least some care and awareness about this stuff, including bringing it up with your group.)
Iād also argue that X-cards and similar āerase-and-rewindā tools seem pretty dang harmful. That is not an evidence-based approach to trauma therapy. (X-card lovers, please see my longer essay before writing in.)
And thirdly Iāve had nothing but bad experiences when people start listing their own must vulnerable, traumatic themes. Iād rather have a more general approach to Lines.
āLinesā and āVeilsā is an older RPG jargon where āLinesā is āstuff thatās not in the game world, no matter whatā and āVeilsā is āstuff that only happens off-screen, implied, fade to black, fast-forwardā.
We use some Lines at my table and itās worked OK over the around four hundred sessions weāve played.
I definitively agree that there should be a baseline of ācommon senseā Lines that you can just assume are in play at a convention, in a mixed group etc.
And a one-shot constellation of players trying to establish their own set is often a pretty bad idea. It often becomes ādonāt think of the blue rhinocerosā, it puts more bad ideas in players heads than it gets rid of them. But for a campaign game, that doesnāt necessarily apply. You can figure out a set of tighter Lines and get used to it over the course of several sessions.
And of course, loosening the Lines, explicitly allowing things beyond the common sense default, isnāt susceptible to the ādonāt think of the blue rhinocerosāāproblem and can work great even at a con.
Now hereās the part that caused me to react the most.
If someone mentions their character seducing the barmaid, make a roll, end scene. Weāll see them in the morning.
No! Holy shit, no! (I mean, I get that this is really common advice, but, Iām definitively not onboard.)
Eww, OK, Iāve had a post in my drafts about how messed up the whole idea of RPG āseductionā is, sinceā¦ I just checked: Nov 16th. Last year. So 376 days. I just donāt even wanna get into it, thatās how messed up it is. (Started writing it as a response to another Gemini post.)
But you know what I find even worse? Having it off-screen. Implied. Fade to black. Wink wink. Nudge. Nudge.
Thatās so skeevy and scary.
Thereās this old newspaper interview with Holmes (from D&D blue box) where he has his players roll dice to see if their chars have had sex in the past, thatās a situation I donāt ever wanna get in. A lot of ācarousing tablesā have the same issue.
That sort of stuff is a technique for a horror game, as a source of pure terrorāāyou wake up with a broken handcuff around your wrist and a mouthful of bloodāthe last thing you remember is going out for a pack of smokesāāgreat for a lycanthrope nightmare, not as the default vanilla approach to sex!
Itās 100000% fine to not want sex at all in the game. Make a Line. Not a Veil, which is a tool that has a lot of problems. (I don't own your table and I'm not gonna come take anyone's Veils away. If a group enjoys it for some topics, even after reading what I've got to say here, that's fine for them. I'm just saying it does not make sense as such a default, widely recommended tool it used to be. Whenever I feel like complaining about X-card, I should remember that what we had beforeāVeilsāwas even worse.)
If youāre good friends with everyone at the table, you already know what kinds of things they can comfortably talk about, in terms of gory combat, torture, or sex, so nobody needs to have the discussion.
You donāt just know that telepathically. Or at least not all groups do.
Session Zero came about because thereās been case after case after case of mismatched expectations and people finally were likeā¦ āI wish groups would just talk to each other first.ā Roleplaying is varied enough that thereās a lot of incompatible assumptions that people have, at one time or another, assumed been the default way to roll.
More Veil examples from Malin:
You seduce a handsome man at the club, fade to black, gain three blood points.
In the actual club?! This is the ābarmaidā example again (except that one also sexualized working in the food service industry).
You locate the brothel easily from all the strange noises, some predictable, others completely unfathomable.
Only for a Yog-Sothoth game, straight out of Unaussprechlichen Kulten. I might be repeating myself rather than explaining it more clearly but implicit can be a lot more disturbing than explicit.
That example can send someone spiraling to trauma city, right there. Iāve seen it.
Entering the Toreadorās house looks like something out of a De Sade novel [ā¦]
Name-checking a real-life convicted rapist (de Sade) is not a āsafeā way to describe a situation like that.
Now, when I say āexplicitā, that doesnāt mean second-by-second, action-by-action, super graphic, super detailed. Thatās not what I mean at all. Instead, what Iām saying is just that be damn clear about whatās happening. We donāt want mismatched understandings about what happened in the game, especially when it comes to characterās emotional and physical integrity. If the player means that the characters are just kissing but the DM is under the mistaken assumption that they went a lot further, thatās a problem.
Roll to find your friend without someone noticing how out of place you are.
I believe this is abstracted from, or paraphrased, from how the game would actually sound at the table? Or do you really roll for stuff like that?
Overall, the main issue with the article is that it seems built on assumptions that āeveryone sees the world like I do, everyone thinks that what I think is OK is OK, everyone thinks that what I think is not OK is not OK, and thereās only one best way to play RPGsā. And, well, yeah. There is a best way (probably better known as blorb), but, people often donāt know it which is why I need to tell āem during session zero! Duh!
Itās just a nice soft start to a campaign, make characters and chill, less stress, less homework, less ābig premiereā nerves, and a chance to clear out some misconceptions.