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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GQuail" data-source="post: 2739093" data-attributes="member: 30709">Hmm, a lot of back and forth on this threat, but it's all very interesting never the less.I almost always run the games I play and I have almost always played with people who were either friends, or friends of friends (and tended to become friends quickly when they wanted to find out what prestige classes were available ;-) )The only times I've run for randoms, it was one-off games for my University's gaming group.  Even then, through the power of such groups I was able to quickly assess someone's personality by a sideways chat with other people I knew.Sure, if you run for people you've only met because they answered your advert for gamers, by all means you might wanna be crystal clear as to your groups ground rules.  But the exact wording of these rules does seem very adversarial to me, and it would make me wonder a bit about the game and it's chequered past.My own game, we don't have formal rules, but I have spoken to the PCs (either in person, over IM software or through my blog, which features weekly "infodumps" recapping the past plot as well as other campaign related stuff) about some issues that have come up: such as when I was worried our start time had crept forward about an hour, and was starting to notably shrink our sessions, especially because some people were leaving earlier as well.  In that case, there were other factors (people with new jobs/I had moved flat and was less central/some people were using public transport rather than their own cars) and we as a group talked about it: and everyone agreed it was a problem and we tried to find a way to solve it.  I may have suggested things, but I invovled all the PCs in the situation, and now we kick start aftr 1830 once we have 4 or more players.  What am I saying?  I guess I'm saying "Your rules come off a bit brash, but there's nothing wrong with setting down in writing some of your groups rules, especially if you have a constant stream of new players who may need to catch up with them."  Like others have said, if I walked into someone's flat and was greeted with "Hey, welcome to our game, by the way you;'d better wash your hands after peeing or you're outta here", I'd get a bit worried about the kind of atmosphere I'd be in if I hung out here.I also specifically think that "no food breaks" is a bit draconian, but my own group did have some problems with this as well: because our start time crept forward, people were getting hungrier earlier into the actual play time, and people seemed less likely to bring food with them as they did before because I literally live right outside a good but busy take-out place: a good solid Scottish fish & chip shop.  ;-)  Plus, my girlfriend (who also plays with us) doesn't like frozen pizzas or similar "quick fix" foods, so when she got hungry it involved a full-on meal preperation, which can add up to quite a lot of lost time.  So, I made sure there was a dedicated "munchie break" mid-game people could aim for, and simply took to either me or my girlfriend making food before the session, or ordering something in.  I guess we all get our pet peeves from previous games, though.  In my current one, our main time-waster is PC's havering over decisions.  I intentionally wanted to be less "rail-roady" so gave them the map of an area, showed their start/end point, and asked them how they were travelling.  At one point, there was 2 valid routes to go to their target: a bridge over an undead-ridden river, or a swamp with a stone circle in the middle.,  They spent almost an hour talking about this, when they knew sod all abotu either and it pretty much came down to a coin toss anyway.  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/worried.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":-S" title="Uhm    :-S" data-shortname=":-S" />  But how do I create a rule about that without sounding unfair?  "Don't worry about your characters?"</blockquote>

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