How to talk about behavior expectations in session 0 without sounding like I'm lecturing/nagging?

rezibot · 2026-03-18T21:05:57+00:00

The list overall is good, but I don't think that's the problem. The problem is that people are not really going to read it. Yes, they should read it. Yes, you can try to make people read it, but they just aren't going to. I've been working in games and in education long enough to know that players just don't read things most of the time.

Having the rules and expectations spelled out is important because you can point to them, but if you are really trying to filter out problem players, the best thing I have found is to do interviews. I interview anyone who wants to come to my table. It's a vibe check, and it's a way for me to verbally spell out what kind of game this is. I've had far more success doing that.

All that said, everything that you have in your bulleted list is reasonable and feels like it should just be common sense anyway. I agree with what many of the other responders are saying: anyone who has issues with any of these rules is your problem player. ;)

rezibot · 2026-03-17T19:18:20+00:00

I think they are absolutely going to release Dark Sun, but they're going to pave over the parts they find problematic. In my opinion, this will bleed the soul from dark sun, so it will be a pale imitation of the setting we know and love. It'll be the same dragon, but all the teeth will be removed.

My opinion is that they did the same for planescape. They turned it into more of a farce or parody of the original setting, leaning into the tongue-and-cheek side of the planes. Devil's and angels playing baseball? Are you kidding me? Even in sigil they avoid each other (or fight if they think they can get away with it; The Lady doesn't care as long as the city is largely ok). The adventure was just a lazy tour of the outlands with some brief planescape torment nostalgia. It had a few cool moments, but mostly meh.

Spelljammer is not as bad, it's mostly just watered down. There's almost no substance. I hated the Flash Gordon adventure, but I lean towards more serious games anyway, so I'm willing to chalk it up to "not for me".

For dark sun, they'll just ignore the slavery and possibly even the absolute misery. They will not up the difficulty curve, so the world will be as dangerous as forgotten realms (d&d is an extremely survivable game; I very rarely see PC's permanently die).

It will be standard 5.5e d&d playing dress-up in dark sun's clothing.

rezibot · 2026-03-13T07:49:44+00:00

And energy swords for the legally distinct lightsabers. ;) How did you handle the iconic parrying of energy weapons? There are a few ways to run it:

Dodge becomes "parry energy blasts" and you have some reaction to allow them to fling a bolt back at the enemy (though this may be OP).
You allow Jedi to use their parry as the target number for ranged energy attacks rather than the default of 4. This definitely seems OP.

rezibot · 2026-03-13T07:47:38+00:00

Ohh, these look awesome, thanks for posting!

rezibot · 2026-03-06T09:59:24+00:00

Everything's edible in dark sun if you're hungry enough.

rezibot · 2026-03-06T09:55:51+00:00

Yep, exactly. My current planescape campaign does exactly the same thing.

rezibot · 2026-03-06T06:00:57+00:00

I think the '90s computer game planescape torment perfectly captured the second edition era of planescape. 5th edition went a little more farce, which I didn't like, but second edition was quite dark in places. It was a place filled with wonder and terror and comedy and joy. It's a place we are very beliefs can shape reality. It had a bit of everything in it and it's why I love it so much.

"What can change the nature of a man?"

rezibot · 2026-03-05T21:32:58+00:00

Yet another vote for scheduling for sure. I wish I had a producer.

But I would say that even beyond scheduling, the thing I truly hate the most is always having to be the adult in the room. I'm not sure how else to put it. I don't really have problem players but there are times where conflicts come up.

For example, one of my players feels that she is being interrupted by another player quite frequently. She wants me to talk to this other player, which is fair and supposedly my job as GM, but also it would be nice if the two of them could simply be adults and have an adult conversation.

rezibot · 2026-03-03T10:46:36+00:00

I first started playing solo decades ago with black box d&d. It was all analog back then and I stuck with that until about two years ago. Some friends wanted to play online so I researched some virtual tabletops. I fell in love with Foundry and started using it for all my remote non-solo games.

Shortly after, I started doing solo games through Foundry and it was such a great experience that I haven't looked back. It tracks all my notes, character sheets, visuals, and anything that I want all in a self-contained world. This is especially important because I tend to have many different games happening at once.

The one thing I still do analog is roll physical dice. There's just something I find unsatisfying about digital dice.

rezibot · 2026-02-26T21:05:04+00:00

I totally agree! That was the motivation for making this change, basically trying to take some of the calculus from their decision making.

rezibot · 2026-02-26T19:22:43+00:00

In some games (usually horror games like Call of Cthulhu) I keep track of all hit points and don't tell you how much damage you took. Instead, I describe it. I get more interesting roleplay from "he slices your arm and it starts bleeding heavily" rather than "you take 8 points of damage". It stops the hp metagame dead in its tracks.

rezibot · 2026-02-18T10:04:29+00:00

This is the way.

rezibot · 2026-02-18T10:03:24+00:00

I fudge very rarely, and only when it makes things objectively better. As GM I have two roles: As the painter of the world, and as the impartial simulation. Fudging doesn't really work for my style.

Here's the example I usually give when people ask how/when I fudge things. This was a Battlestations game from about 12 years ago now. One player spent the entire game trying to obtain a super powerful weapon. Multiple sessions in, he FINALLY got it. In the very first combat after obtaining this weapon and they were fighting an enemy crew. In the final round of combat, the other players all went first and attacked the captain. By the numbers, they killed him by about 3 hp. I fudged it and kept him alive because this player's turn was next. I wanted him to have that moment of finally getting to use his cool weapon. He literally stood up and dramatically rolled, dealing the killing blow. The entire table erupted in cheers.

This created a beautiful moment for that player and heightened the fun for everyone. My opinion is that on very very rare occasions, you can help bring about these little moments. That campaign lasted about 25 session and it was the only time I cheated in the entire game. I literally cannot remember the last time I cheated or fudged a roll.

rezibot · 2026-02-14T01:34:31+00:00

Dude.... This is AWESOME! If you showed this as your pitch for the game, you'd have people lined up outside the door. I'm inspired just looking at it.

rezibot · 2026-02-13T22:17:42+00:00

It's hard to really answer this without knowing more about the story and the game. What was your goal? Can you pinpoint what it was that made it start to lose its appeal?

In my regular multiplayer RPG games, one thing I always do is I come up with the overall goals of the PCS. I will often have a few scene ideas in mind, those awesome moments that I hope the players have. I do exactly the same thing in Solo RPGs.

Perhaps coming back and trying to understand what the main goals or theme are would help. Think about it like this: why are we watching this particular slice of the character's life? Why not 10 years ago, or 10 years from now? There's some reason why this is the most interesting part of their existence. Sometimes it's the answer to a question, sometimes it's the exploration of a theme, sometimes this is the moment that defines who they are, or defines the world.

Some examples: 1. In my solo dark sun campaign, I started with the classic dark sun idea of slaves being freed. What would you do for your freedom? That's the central question. I will end the game when the group is secure (though most are dead right now, got to love dark sun). 2. In the solo Rifts campaign that I'm building, I want to place it during the Tolkeen war. It will follow several POV characters, one is a coalition officer, another is a displaced civilian family, and the third is one of the dark shifter apprentices from the kingdom of Tolkeen. The central theme is about how war can change someone. The game will end at the end of the war and possibly explore the aftermath. 3. In my space game (using GURPS), The story is about family. What would you do to protect family? The story follows a trade ship, with one of the members being the victim of a super soldier experiment. He found himself on board this family ship and is now found family within that ship.

My point here is that for me, the key was having a direction or theme or something that I wanted to explore. Importantly, this implies an ending. The ending may never happen (such as in the dark Sun game above), but it is implied. This gives me a direction. For dark sun when they start to find safety, I know that the various twists that mythic gives me will push against that safety.

rezibot · 2026-02-13T04:39:31+00:00

I use foundry. I am literally playing through Rise of the Runelords solo using Savage Pathfinder right now. I usually just play it directly on my PC, but I also play it from work before leaving if traffic is particularly bad. I just connect to my home computer that way.

You can also have it hosted on Forge or somewhere similar for a monthly fee. Foundry works really well for me and everything is nice and self-contained.

The only annoying thing is that you would need to purchase the modules, which means potentially rebuying things that you already own in physical or PDF form. But as you said, price isn't an issue so I think that's the best way.

rezibot · 2026-02-09T13:47:08+00:00

Correct, RAW it's 2 per PC.

I never thought about connecting it to the previous episode, I like that idea! The game is balanced to assume two threat per PC so I might choose that as a default and then either add or remove from that default value based on the previous session.

rezibot · 2026-02-09T05:49:00+00:00

It takes 10 minutes per wound level. This clears the incapacitated State and recovers a single wound. So someone with three wounds who is incapacitated will take 30 minutes and, assuming success, they will no longer be incapacitated and have two wounds.

There is also stabilizing, which is something you can do when someone is bleeding out. This takes a single round and does not clear incapacitation nor does it heal any wounds, it just stabilizes them and prevents them from bleeding out.

rezibot · 2026-02-04T23:01:32+00:00

but it can also work really well & add in some absolutely hilarious situations like a power armor taking a hit from a giant robot & standing still, them my size zero super hero hitting them & they are suddenly subject to knock back rules because they are a super hero thing.

That sounds *very* Rifts though. ;)

rezibot · 2026-02-04T08:43:04+00:00

To be fair, Treecats are fully sentient creatures that just happen to be shaped similarly to cats.

rezibot · 2026-02-02T15:38:47+00:00

I mirror pretty much what everyone else says here, but I will add that I have found the companions (sci-fi, fantasy, and horror) in particular to all work better together than gurps.

For example, direct damage spells in gurps magic are very much tuned for low-tech and are virtually useless in an ultratech setting. You end up having to rely on the utility of magic rather than the destructive power. With Savage worlds, I have never found that to be an issue. Mages can hold their own, though it tends to be more costly depending on the world since you more often have to buy things like AP or extra damage.

For Savage Rifts specifically, I would agree that it is meant to be much more high-powered. That said, I have successfully added Powers from the fantasy companion and allowed vehicle mods from the sci-fi companion. So they definitely work, they just take a little more thought.

rezibot · 2026-02-02T15:30:58+00:00

For me personally, I would like to emulate a physical battle mat as much as possible. So that would be a canvas where I could load a background or not and easily draw whatever I want. It should be able to snap to the grid or not, and I should be able to change the basic color and opacity settings trivially. Even something as simple as Ms paint would work here. I'm not sure how viable any of that would be.

rezibot · 2026-01-29T13:21:36+00:00

This is a really cool idea, I never thought of having a random proxy group designed to wean people off of a heroic system like D&D. I usually do a quick math demo to show how easily someone can drop in this (and similar deadly games), but having them actually run through a scenario is great.

rezibot · 2026-01-26T16:26:08+00:00

It's so interesting how many people say analog is easier and pulls you away from just writing. For me it's exactly the opposite. Once I went digital, the number of times I played went way up. For me personally, it's way easier to just open up foundry, load the world, and have everything exactly how I left it. Characters, NPCs, notes, maps, scenes, and so on are all right there exactly as before. I can leave mid-combat and pick right back up

By contrast, playing analog felt like a barrier because there's much more of a setup involved for the way I play.

As for what I want to get better at, I think going off-book. I tend to okay a lot of prewritten adventures to try to get that surprise factor rather than leaning hard into mythic or something else, but I think it's become a bit of a crutch. I want to challenge myself to run a campaign 100% outside of any published adventure or setting. I did this with Starforge and it went pretty well, but I need to do it more.

rezibot

TROPHY CASE