Last week, some buddies of mine on IRC recruited me to run a DnD campaign for them.  Since my ongoing IRC DnD campaign had just broken up, I agreed.

We talked, first, about what the setting and premise of the game should be.  They mostly said, "Whatever you want" so I presented them with some choices, based on my personal favorites.  Everyone had an objection to at least one of the ideas, so the one with no objections won out: "Intrigue in a Noble Court"

We started discussing character concepts.  I told them that due to the urban setting, stealth and interpersonal skills would likely be more useful that straight-out combat power.  The first three concepts I got were:

• An oversexed faerie
• A centaur
• A pseudodragon

I said, "Are you sure you guys don't want the "Protectors of a Sacred Forest Glade" idea?"  They laughed, but said no, they wanted the urban game.  I pointed out the difficulties those characters would face.  The guy who wanted the centaur changed his mind, and made a human bounty hunter; the other two kept theirs.  The other two characters that were created were assassins; one a ninja, the other a stripper.

(BTW, the players of the stripper and the oversexed faeries were both women.  IKYN.)

Since I set the game in The Forge (see the link for disambiguation), I took the two players who knew the setting as natives, and the three newbies had their characters removed from their familiar surroundings and tossed into the Forge as "seeds".

I expected things to get out of hand, for there to be some rocky bits as the game found its feet, especially since the players didn't seem to voice any strong opinions about what they wanted.

The three seeds were dropped into various quiet corners of the palace of Lady Aminita, a minor bloodlord in the city of Penance.  The initial interactions were mostly diceless, as the "native" PC's discovered the seeds, and had extended social-heavy scenes learning about each other.

Normally, I don't start DND campaigns this way; I usually start 'in media res' with an action scene, as that's what I see DnD being best at, but in deference to their interest in a more well-rounded campaign, I gave the players some time to define their characters right up front.   I also gave some short screen-time to some NPC's who I hope will become important in future sessions.

These social scenes were concluded with an audience with Lady Aminita, who ordered the native PC's (her loyal retainers) to keep an eye on the newcomers to make sure they were not interlopers or infiltrators posing as seeds.  We concluded there.

If I were to try to characterise the session, I would say it was pretty sim-heavy; everyone seemed to be spending a lot of effort finding out who their characters were, what the setting was like, and how the whole thing was going to fit together. 

This group of players had not played extensively together in the past.  Each one of them had played a session or two with one or two of the others, but the group did not have a history of highly cohesive play... but they fell into it right away.  The two people who are familiar with the setting quickly cottoned to the authority to quote from the book when topics related to the setting came up, but didn't object if I deviated a little here and there from what they were familiar with.

My next step in the game is to start introducing conflicts; different NPC's who want mutually exclusive things from the PC's; I want to poke them and see which way they jump.

Hi,

Usually when I hear, "Whatever you want", I almost always get a red flag in my head.  In my experience,  unless I really know the player, for the most part it almost always translates to a player afraid to put out a suggestion or idea from the get go.  Fortunately for you at least the players voiced objections and threw out some input that way, although I think "if they really wanted court intrigue" is something that can only be answered over a 3-5 sessions of play when you get that kind of answer.  Ditto with making judgements on Creative Agenda.

For example, I've recently begun running an L5R game, and decided to run a 3 session throwaway scenario to get to know the new rules and the group, and now that we're starting a 4th session, with the intent of a long term story arc, I'm seeing a few players come out of their shells.  In all likelihood, you may find it takes a few sessions for people to really overcome hesitation and fear and become comfortable with each other's style.  Online- it may take longer simply because it's a slower medium, and its harder to send all the side communication (quick remarks, non-verbal communication) that also go into play.

Chris

Hi,

Fred, I think you got hammered a little by the shift (or return, rather) to the no-edit policy. If your post needed some tuning and we're seeing the rough draft, feel free to amend it in the next post. I really want to encourage the Actual-Play-first philosophy here, and don't want to lose the benefit from this one.

Anyway, I'm not really sure why you've brought up Incoherence at all, as it seems irrelevant to any aspect of your account except for the part Chris (Bankuei) focused on ... and actually, even a certain amount of hesitancy about "what we want" at the beginning is no particular indicator that the people don't have something(s) they want.

I also don't see any particular need to bring Creative Agenda into the discussion based on the play you're talking about. Let's just let that issue hold until we actually have some reward cycles to talk about.

Best,
Ron

As had been recommended to me, I previewed the post before sending it (three times, in fact) so it's pretty much how I intended it.

I know that it's understood at the Forge that CA is only meaningful over large stretches of play, including a 'complete reward cycle'.  I don't think it's unreasonable to say that a particular play session was dominated by what looked like sim play, any more than it's unreasonable for an ornithologist to observe that a particular bird he was watching was engaging in caching behavior, and I will continue to report what I see as play proceeds.

There has been another session of play, but I'm not sure how much of it I can summarize in an all-ages forum like this one.  Suffice it to say that the players continued with the exploration of their characters, in terms of what they were willing to do, and with whom.

Hi,

Considering that we've discussed both rape, sexism, and racism on these forums, numerous times,  both as issues in gaming and imagined content- I don't think you'll be breaking any rules here.

And certainly, even a single session can tell you a lot about the players' and the CA- but usually a lot of cues are picked up face to face that you miss out on IRC.

Chris