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Re: I Don’t Run Session Zero

Malin doesn’t run a session zero

and I couldn’t disagree more.

Now, I do a session zero maybe… a third of the time? Two-fifths? It’s hard to say because it’s increasingly often. It’s not a hard and fast rule but it’s just often been more helpful than not.

Here’s an overview of the points I wanna address specifically:

Default Veils
Default Lines
Default safety tools in general (lack thereof)
Char-gen & campaign pitch

To the extent that there’s other stuff, go read the original article.

I’ll 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.

Char-gen & campaign pitch

“Fenestra has a dark fantasy feel, and the campaign structure encourages exploration.” […] People should make characters in session 1 […] backstories in BIND is an in-game system.

This is session zero.

You can call it session one, that’s fine, I’m 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, that’s fine.

The Answer

But that’s 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 don’t 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 we’re playing a game that doesn’t have characters, like Microscope Chronicle.

Making characters at the actual table actually together—that’s like the defining feature of a session zero!

It’s 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 don’t want their GM to fudge and most GMs do fudge, so that’s 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.)

“The campaign structure encourages exploration” is typical of the stuff that causes people to recommend a session zero, heck, that’s a lot more explicit about the setup than I usually am!

Safety tools

I already have an essay about this.

RPG safety tools

I agree that it can be kind of weird to talk about “safety”. 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.)

I’d also argue that X-cards and similar “erase-and-rewind” 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 I’ve had nothing but bad experiences when people start listing their own must vulnerable, traumatic themes. I’d rather have a more general approach to Lines.

Default Lines

“Lines” and “Veils” is an older RPG jargon where “Lines” is “stuff that’s not in the game world, no matter what” and “Veils” is “stuff that only happens off-screen, implied, fade to black, fast-forward”.

We use some Lines at my table and it’s worked OK over the around four hundred sessions we’ve played.

I definitively agree that there should be a baseline of “common sense” Lines that you can just assume are in play at a convention, in a mixed group etc.

Tightening Lines

And a one-shot constellation of players trying to establish their own set is often a pretty bad idea. It often becomes “don’t think of the blue rhinoceros”, it puts more bad ideas in players heads than it gets rid of them. But for a campaign game, that doesn’t necessarily apply. You can figure out a set of tighter Lines and get used to it over the course of several sessions.

Loosening Lines

And of course, loosening the Lines, explicitly allowing things beyond the common sense default, isn’t susceptible to the “don’t think of the blue rhinoceros”–problem and can work great even at a con.

Veils

Now here’s the part that caused me to react the most.

If someone mentions their character seducing the barmaid, make a roll, end scene. We’ll see them in the morning.

No! Holy shit, no! (I mean, I get that this is really common advice, but, I’m definitively not onboard.)

Eww, OK, I’ve had a post in my drafts about how messed up the whole idea of RPG “seduction” is, since… I just checked: Nov 16th. Last year. So 376 days. I just don’t even wanna get into it, that’s 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.

That’s so skeevy and scary.

There’s 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, that’s a situation I don’t ever wanna get in. A lot of “carousing tables” have the same issue.

That sort of stuff is a technique for a horror game, as a source of pure terror—“you wake up with a broken handcuff around your wrist and a mouthful of blood—the last thing you remember is going out for a pack of smokes”—great for a lycanthrope nightmare, not as the default vanilla approach to sex!

It’s 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 before—Veils—was even worse.)

If you’re 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 don’t just know that telepathically. Or at least not all groups do.

Session Zero came about because there’s been case after case after case of mismatched expectations and people finally were like… “I wish groups would just talk to each other first.” Roleplaying is varied enough that there’s 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 “barmaid” 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. I’ve seen it.

Entering the Toreador’s house looks like something out of a De Sade novel […]

Name-checking a real-life convicted rapist (de Sade) is not a “safe” way to describe a situation like that.

Now, when I say “explicit”, that doesn’t mean second-by-second, action-by-action, super graphic, super detailed. That’s not what I mean at all. Instead, what I’m saying is just that be damn clear about what’s happening. We don’t want mismatched understandings about what happened in the game, especially when it comes to character’s 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, that’s 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 “everyone 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 there’s only one best way to play RPGs”. And, well, yeah. There is a best way (probably better known as blorb), but, people often don’t know it which is why I need to tell ‘em during session zero! Duh!

It’s just a nice soft start to a campaign, make characters and chill, less stress, less homework, less “big premiere” nerves, and a chance to clear out some misconceptions.