Astro Artificer- It’s not Luck at all
- The Dice Giveth and Taketh away
- Session 0 is a Timeshare Pitch
- The Science behind the Luck
- Gaining Advantage on the Roll
- Make your own Luck
It’s not Luck at all
Trying to find a good table can feel like auditioning for a band. There’s plenty of good musicians out there, even ones that you like as a friend, that you just won’t click with as part of a band. After a few auditions, maybe you’ll get some weird chemistries, but that’s not enough to get a band together. Good bands resonate with each other. They complement each other. Of course, it’s luck to find a band that works. Campaigns are no different. That’s the conventional wisdom. And I think that’s completely wrong.
Now, of course, there is a degree of luck involved. But group cohesion, a strong campaign, doesn’t have to be luck. And as I discussed this topic on ENworld, I started to notice some trends. Luck is what people call it when they can’t explain their success. But all of the “lucky tables” seemed to be doing some very deliberate things. Weird quirks that seemed to make their tables work. Practices drawn from years of trial and experience.
Table composition is one of the top factors behind campaign longevity. When you pull back factors like scheduling and logistics, most campaign fizzles come from a Player/GM mismatch. So, it should be obvious then. Find players who match the vibe at the table. Sounds easy, right? Nope. Not at all.
A fair amount is luck. A lot of players don't know what they like. Especially new players. You can try training new players to like the type of game you want to run but after the new players gain experience, the likes may change. Experienced players may like one type of game but for the next game want to try something different. Now you become the test GM for the 'what I think I want' from the player wanting something new. If it turns out that the new thing isn't fun for that player, oops.
— Koloth
Players are fickle. Preferences change. And when they do, the GM is the one responsible for it.
It feels like luck because tables are mercurial. They seem unpredictable. And we are going to explore why this problem sucks, what we’ve tried doing about it, and what actually works.
The Dice Giveth and Taketh away
Trying to form a group with new players feels like rolling a skill check with a high DC. And although that may be fine in a game where the stakes are fictional, it’s a roll that many of us would rather not take. Countless hours. Prep that goes nowhere. The loss of friends for no good reason. All of these are the consequences of failing a roll when forming a party. Even a single player (as Valetudo) can fizzle the whole campaign.
Once that [arguments over expectations] happened, the group splintered. The player who thought he was the problem ended up leaving, and he was not the problem at all. That is one of the costs of letting these situations persist too long: the person most willing to self-reflect is often the one who walks out first. I was lucky it only happened two or three sessions before the campaign ended.
The tragic part is that the people who should not be catching strays to find them. When tables fall, it’s not the unproblematic players who take the brunt. If anything, they are almost blind to the consequences. The players who are self-aware enough to care often punish themselves.
The innocent suffer a broken table, because they cared the most.
Even tables that started out well can feel the burden of this shift. Campaigns that started with an aligned table can all fizzle because people aren’t consistent.
Life changes. People change, too. Player churn is a natural fact of life. And as a matter of fact, GMs are sensitive to this shift as well.
Flip side is that you-as-GM will slowly change as well. You might go in wanting a deep-drama serious game and a year later real life's provided enough drama of its own and you're yearning for some gonzo silliness, but don't want to change campaigns as the current one is otherwise rocking hard.
— Lanefan
So it is luck then! You can’t predict how people will change, so the best thing is to set up all the expectations clear at session 0 to account for that.
Session zeros aren’t the best for predicting long-term campaign health. And the reason may surprise you.
Session 0 is a Timeshare Pitch
But somehow, "Session Zero" has become internet shorthand for "Problem Solved!" Take this step and everything will work itself out. It doesn't actually help you find (or shape) good players to fit your needs. Its just an informal contract filled with promises and agreements that eventually get lost, forgotten, and broken the longer the game continues. By that time, your group will have already determined its own trajectory through shared experiences, circumstances, and fate.
This is a take that ruffled a lot of feathers on threads. Session Zero is often touted as the panacea, the cure-all to campaign health. While I agree that it’s important to set expectations, Session Zeros have evolved into what seems to be a seminar from the GM. Players go through session zeros so that they can listen to the GM pitch the campaign, state their rules, and then provide their characters for approval.
As Jacob Lewis again puts it.
"Session Zero" isn't meant to be a screening process to find the right people. It's usually either a negotiation, an interrogation, or an orientation for people you've already invited to have a seat at your table. You're attempting an elevator pitch for the whole show when you have only an outline with some notes in the margins about a few key scenes. A lot of players show up with the mindset that this is just time set aside for character creation and getting GM approval. They're just sitting through the required seminar so they can claim a piece of the promised time-share.
If you have ever had to sit through a timeshare pitch before, you know the pain. Sometimes you’re lured in with the reward of a free vacation, so you travel to the timeshare listing. The agent does their best to get your buy-in on the property, shows it to you, explains the rules of owning a timeshare, and ultimately tries to get you in the program. You just want a vacation. So, you wait while they finish their pitch, and comply with everything, until they are forced to give you the waiver for a free vacation. It is heartbreaking to realize that, after all of that, the “free vacation” they were promising turns out not to be that at all. (This actually happened to me, btw.)
I actually don’t think you’re going to find this all out in session zero. In my experience, we had to muddle through a few tables with players who either didn’t fit in well, or weren’t respectful of schedules.
— Artamo
Session zeroes are great when you have the right people at the table. But they don’t help you find those right players. And it doesn’t help if those players don’t know what’s right for themselves.
Session zero is a calibration tool, not a selection tool. It can’t help you find the right people.
The Science behind the Luck
It’s not luck at all. It’s much simpler and a lot less glamorous than a roll of the dice. Like all relationships, it takes an immense amount of work and intentionality.
It really starts with you.
It takes a bit of honesty and self-awareness. Do you know what you want from a table of players? What excites you? What player habits cause you to never want to play the game again? Many think that they do, but I would hazard a guess that for many, those answers are a bit hazy.
It feels like luck because it is a risk. You can do all the work and still fail. Because people are not static, and we often don’t have all of the answers that we need (about ourselves or others).
So what can we do?
The culminated wisdom from many GMs? Filter people as hard as possible. Then iterate until you find a table that sticks.
This may suck to hear for some GMs, but the answer is to be more selective with people and less attached to them. A cohesive table is built from a lot of trials and a lot of test campaigns.
Filtering hard gave me a stable group that is now nearing its ninth year, wrapping up its third campaign, and preparing for a fourth. Everyone at that table wants an immersion-heavy, roleplay-heavy experience, and when problems come up, we can actually talk them through. People who were not a good fit were let go, and the long-term players supported that with action.
A big-tent game can be great in small doses. But if you truly want a game that will stand the test of time, you need players who are long-term partners. And that means players who are already aligned with what you want, and are willing to be patient and stick it out through thick and thin. Ultimately, these should be people with whom you already get along well.
So, I 100% agree that there is no reason at all to just work on "vibes". This is a hobby based on communication and it shouldn't be shocking that good communication is a key building block for a successful, long-term group.
— Sable Wyvern
I know this seems obvious, but session zero is the starting point of the conversation, not the conclusion. Communication allows for miscommunication. Words get lost in translation all the time. So, one must be vigilant and constantly check in with players about their expectations. The older your campaign gets, the more and more important this becomes. Overall, your table will trust you more.
I’ve done that with 5 very successful online groups now. There was some churn up front in a couple of them as I ironed out vibes and compatibility via discussions and interviews, and I had to get better at how I did my framing to ensure there was inherent filtering going on in who replied, but things hum along nicely now.
— Zakael19
At the end of the day, it really is as simple as finding out ahead of time what makes the game worth it to show up for everyone. Is this a table that we are all compatible enough to make work? The most successful GMs that I see in this thread are those who can sift the right players and then give those players the right expectations. It’s a two-pronged approach. Find the right players to play the right game with.
The problem with that is, what are you looking for in a player? How do you know that they will work out? What “vibes” are needed to make it all work?
Gaining Advantage on the Roll
If miscommunication is the problem, then communication must be the solution. But what are the proper words? What if we end up in the same place
From what people have suggested in this thread, there are a few reliable signals.
- Find players who will have fun doing the same things you do
- Play with players that you already enjoy being with as friends.
- Choose people who value the table’s experience over their own.
- Find people who are genuinely interested in just your game.
- Cares about the same playstyle aspects that you do
- Share the same level of emotional investment as you do
Remember, these are all reliable signals for long-term games, not just games that will work in the short term.
What do all of these suggest about a healthy table?
Reasons 1,5, and 6 all assume that they come to the table for the same reasons you do. You enjoy games with a similar style. What this looks like in practice is that the player who loves roleplay will enjoy a table where a GM enjoys political intrigue. A player who enjoys character optimization will feel at home with a GM who runs boss rushes. A casual player will do well with a table over beers and pretzels. An Immersed player will thrive at a table that gives a memorial to their beloved side-character’s funeral.
Reasons 2 and 3 are similar in the fact that these people are those whom you would enjoy outside of the game. There’s an important caveat with 2, as many commentators in the thread have mentioned. Don’t bring people in just because they are your friends. This is how you confuse groups of people who want to hang out with those who want a well-written game (see reason 6). But, if you like them enough outside of a table, it’s a good signal that the person is agreeable enough to you. Furthermore, 3 is a subtle signal that is very important. The hard truth is that a healthy group can only arise from sacrifices. Doing what is good for the group can sometimes come at the cost at enjoyment for yourself, and this is fine (as long as it is not completely sacrificial). Is it cool to get the last kill in? Maybe. But if the NPC is important to somebody else’s character arc, maybe it’d be better to let them have the kill. Small sacrifices like that, over time, create a table where everybody wants the best overall experience.
Reason 4 sounds simple, but it is actually quite profound. People say they want to be in your game, but do they really? How much? Where do they mentally place your game in their head over other priorities, games, and hobbies? Is your game worth sacrificing their own time for? If you can get a yes to any of the above questions, you’re in a good place. But how do you actually get a good answer for that?
These questions are actually things you can find a definitive answer to through using the Player Archetypes system. It doesn’t provide an exact answer for how people will behave with others at the table, but you can get a lot of good signals, such as compatible playstyles, fun profiles, and why they show up at a table. After that, you have to maintain that relationship. Make sure that people want to stay.
Neon Chameleon put it best.
You don't just want good players but ones that vibe with the game you want to run.
Make your own Luck
It's solvable, and takes work to make your own luck.
It isn’t a luck problem. It’s a communication problem that requires a lot of work. And that work can be made easier if we have the right tools. Those tools are only useful if you know what you want to build.
There are some extra nuggets of wisdom I want to share.
This may sound like a systemic problem given how many people run to the answer that it’s a “luck” problem. But the reality is that any system is made of individual pieces. Are you the kind of GM or player who you’d want to play with? By improving ourselves as GMs and players, we ultimately raise everybody’s experience of the game.
Personally, I have always preferred players who cared more about sharing the experience with others than the actual game. If you find those people, you can have just about any game you want.
It isn’t about the game. It rarely was. When you find the right table, the right people that make it worth it, any game that you play will work. Building a cohesive table is best with the kind of people who push in shopping carts when they’re done shopping. It is a thankless job to make somebody else’s job easier by pushing the cart after you’re done. But those who are selfless enough to care about other people’s needs are those who can make a table work well.
Not all friends make a great table, but a great table is made up of all friends. Wanting to stay connected with others is ultimately more important (and harder to predict). But those groups tend to stay together and withstand the test of time.
— Astro