How much buy-in from the players do you need before you start a campaign?

[Aeolius]

None whatsoever.

To clarify, for the past 15 years I have only run online games, both play-by-post and chat-based. I suppose there are those who would post a notice on a message-board or make an announcement in a chat room to the effect of "Hey, y'all!! I'm going to start a new game. What sort of game do you want?". I am not one of those.

I prefer a different approach. I envision the basics of a campaign setting, dream up the BBEG, and work my way down. I'll cast the campaign concept into a school of prospective players and see if I get a nibble. If not, no worries. I am very patient.

A few quotes come to mind, from Field of Dreams, "If you build it, they will come.", to Down Periscope, "I think we prefer to go with the bizarre and risky. Worked for us so far.".

 

[Pbartender]

None whatsoever.

To clarify, for the past 15 years I have only run online games, both play-by-post and chat-based. I suppose there are those who would post a notice on a message-board or make an announcement in a chat room to the effect of "Hey, y'all!! I'm going to start a new game. What sort of game do you want?". I am not one of those.

I prefer a different approach. I envision the basics of a campaign setting, dream up the BBEG, and work my way down. I'll cast the campaign concept into a school of prospective players and see if I get a nibble. If not, no worries. I am very patient.

But, to a large degree, that's still buy-in... Buy-in being generally defined as a shared commitment to a common goal. The only difference is how you decide what the common goal is.

Many DMs ask their players, "What type of game are you interested in?"

You are asking them, "Are you interested in this particular game?"

I've done both, depending on my mood.

Either way, in the end, you end up with a group of players who have made a commitment to work together to play a specific style and genre of game."

Even the decision of which game system to play with is by definition requires a certain minimal amount buy-in. Otherwise, you would end up with a perfectly chaotic game wherein each player was playing a character using whatever rules at whatever level they saw fit.

 

[IronWolf]

To clarify, for the past 15 years I have only run online games, both play-by-post and chat-based. I suppose there are those who would post a notice on a message-board or make an announcement in a chat room to the effect of "Hey, y'all!! I'm going to start a new game. What sort of game do you want?". I am not one of those.

I prefer a different approach. I envision the basics of a campaign setting, dream up the BBEG, and work my way down. I'll cast the campaign concept into a school of prospective players and see if I get a nibble. If not, no worries. I am very patient.

In this case I think your group self-selected and that was done by you presenting what your campaign is going to be about and interested people joined up. Since your pool of players is much larger you can simply say, this is what I am running and this is the genre and you are bound to get people interested in that particular campaign.

I think a lot of the discussion here is for the pen and paper or already established gaming groups and whether that DM runs the campaign idea by the players for buy-in.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I think it's very helpful so that the players' expectations of what they'll get out of the campaign mesh with the campaign direction that the GM present them with. In that last campaign we played in there was no indication of what direction the campaign would take. Myself and another player created mercenary, scoundrel types and the campaign was a save the world type. It was still a fun campaign but if some level of buy-in was sought out, I would have made a more heroic character that fit well with the plot.

 

[Mallus]

Not much. I'm more interested in cultivating buy-in as the campaign develops. Who knows from the start where it will go?

I try to run games which are flexible enough to accommodate the player's particular preferences, while at the same time reflecting my own point of view ie, all my interests, quirks, and idiosyncrasies. Put it this way, I trust that my players to take the game in interesting directions and I trust myself to place my own indelible creative stamp on the whole affair, even when I'm deliberately catering to player preferences.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I try to get an idea of what my players are interested in playing, setting, characters, type of action and such and them build something around that.

Basicly a survey:
Setting: Fantasy - Steampunk - Dark - High - Urban - Dungeon Crawl - Exploring - etc...
Type: Combat driven - Mystery - Horror - Political - Plane - etc.

 

[MortonStromgal]

Depends on the game. Usually the players need to figure out why they are all working together and what role they each will take. Whos the faceman? Whos the fighter? stuff like that.

 

[DragonLancer]

Because they're your friends, and you want to make sure you're all having a good time? It's kind of like asking if people want to play two-hand touch or tackle football before you start the first play.

There's more ways to play D&D, or any other game, than you can shake a stick at. Not all those ways are fun for all people.

How much you need to go over really depends on the people involved. I recently got a new bunch of folks together, and I didn't know all their preferences well beforehand, so I had a discussion with each in turn to figure out what they wanted. After this campaign runs its course, I'd probably not have to do much of anything before starting another game with the same group.

I'm assuiming that most will be posting with the point of view that they have an established playgroup. As such I would expect that group to know what each other likes and wants from a game. If someone has an idea for something that might be interesting and cool to do, I would expect them to raise it without the DM having to ask.

With new players I would just undertake a basic generic game for a few levels to gage their enjoyment (assuming they don't knwo what sort of thing they are after) and then see.

 

[IronWolf]

I'm assuiming that most will be posting with the point of view that they have an established playgroup. As such I would expect that group to know what each other likes and wants from a game. If someone has an idea for something that might be interesting and cool to do, I would expect them to raise it without the DM having to ask.

Likes change over time or sometimes people are just in the mood for something different. When our group recently switched up DMs and campaigns I let the group know what I had in mind to run, why I thought it would be a good fit for the group and then had them weigh in on it. I didn't want to make any assumptions for the players and give them a chance to raise the flag to stop if what I thought the group would like was not accurate.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

At a basic level, buy-in is very important:
- what system,
- what type of setting (pirates? ninjas? robots? all of the above?),
- roughly what power-level (supers, gritty, epic, low-magic, etc).
- other campaign aspects or major house-rules that players might have a beef with (humans only, evil PCs, no rez, nerfed magic, etc)

In an established group, I imagine this step in campaign planning goes without saying, since everyone knows everyone else. In a new group, though, this is extremely important, imho, so everyone has similar expectations and can play the game in a way that everyone enjoys.