Go Hard

As just explained to me by Ozymandias on Facebook, "Session Zero" is a discussion of the player's interests, what are the player boundaries, what is the player looking to get out of the game.  It's admitted that communication is good and that generally people should have it, but if the player is dictating everything to the DM, then where's the surprise and mystery?  And for my money, I'll add to his point by asking, where is the fear?

It's the same reason why professional BDSM doesn't make sense to a lot of people.  You want to be controlled, so you go to a ProDomme, who you tell what to do, then pay her money to do it, then pretend that you're being "controlled," while she pretends she's controlling you.  At the same time, if you made a contract with a person who might actually be ready to control YOU for real, you would wisely not show up.  So what's the deal here?

The deal is that players (and BDSM clients) want their fantasy dished out just the way they like it.  They don't want surprises, they don't want stress, they don't want to be challenged, they don't want to take a risk ... and the industry and community confirms that.  It may be a game but, unlike golf, we don't want anyone making difficult golf courses.  Unlike kayaking, we only want to boat on quiet rivers.  Unlike free climbing, we don't want t climb any unclimbed routes.  We want the cliches.  We want the same conversations to get around the guards or to convince the vendor to sell for a few coins less.  We want the adventures to end in a big bad, and we want the big bad to have a simple agenda and to be there waiting for us, and we want the big bad to be absolutely killable.  We don't want any surprises.

On the other hand, I advocate a stress game.  I want the D&D equivalent of the hole depicted on the right.  And as the players line up to take their shot at the next round of the adventure, I want them to hesitate just as you would if I told you your LIFE depended on you landing your golf shot somewhere on the green, the rough or the sand trap ... because if you hit rock with that ball, that ball is gone.

And I want my D&D game to have that flexibility.  It isn't about getting it on the green. The green is terrific; but there's enough flexibility that the rough or a sand trap will do.  It's an ascending scale of how much shit your character can get in before they actually die.  But there's always a chance you'll fuck up that stroke and yes, doing so, that's the end of that character.

Moreover, as a DM, I'm not going to have a session zero that shows you this golf hole.  I'm going to drive you out to it in a car with blacked out windows, and I'm going to have you make the bet with me before you see the hole.  By the time you see the hole, it's too late to back out.  That's the sort of game I run.

That's the sort of game I want to play ... because I think, for myself, if I were pulled out to that hole and told to take my shot, that I'd want to see if I could do it.  That's the thrill for me.  The test to see if I'm up to it.  Unfortunately for me, this seems to apply to situations where thinking is most of the game ... if we actually are talking golf, then yeah, I'm going to fuck that hole because I'm not that great a player, though I enjoy the nuance of the game.  But if we're talking D&D, and you're running me as a player, and you park me in front of this hole, then yeah.  I think I'm going to be fine.  I think I'm going to fucking enjoy making that shot and I'm damn comfortable with the consequences.

I have a pretty high regard for myself mentally. I don't need to talk it out with the DM before we get started.  I don't need to establish boundaries regarding what might happen to my characters because I don't have any boundaries.  Not because I don't get uncomfortable, but because I like discomfort.  I like being pushed.  I like the agony and stress of a frustrating, uncertain, and potentially unwinnable situation.  That's why I got into chess at an early age.  That's why I fell in love with D&D in a single night.  That's why I've thrown my whole potential life away in order to spend it obsessed with this game.  Because I like the fact that it isn't cut and dried, it isn't safe, it isn't sure, and it sure as hell isn't easy.

And that is why lately I have been so frustrated and down about the community as a whole.  Because of late I feel an increase of being the only one that feels this way about this game.  That I don't want it to be the same silly cliches of 40 years ago.  And I want others not to want those cliches too.

But ... oh fuck it.  No buts.  Let's just play this fucking game.