Maybe I have been lucky for years, maybe because I only play with friends, but I fail to see how it's a problem in real life.
For me role-playing games are a social activities, and I've of the nation rules of a social activity is consensus. We do it for a movies evening (which movie are we going to watch? Which cinema? Which time slot?), for a dinner (which restaurant?), for a board game night (we play Ticket to Ride again or we test Agricola?).
RPG nights are similar. I am the DM, but I have never decided alone which kind of game we were going to have, not had another player. We discuss (are we going to do yet another dungeon crawl? Are we visiting the Planes?) and we find consensus (maybe a dungeon crawl in the planes?). Same thing about rulings, we are there to enjoy the night, if somebody doesn't agree with a rolling we discuss it briefly and we go on.
If I have understood right, game theorists call it a session zero, I call it a social contrat, and I seriously recommend it. Because if everybody is on the same page about it, game master agency and player agency aren't really problems.
Or maybe I live in a Carebears and Unicorns world and that's why I have never experienced this problem, of course...
For me role-playing games are a social activities, and I've of the nation rules of a social activity is consensus. We do it for a movies evening (which movie are we going to watch? Which cinema? Which time slot?), for a dinner (which restaurant?), for a board game night (we play Ticket to Ride again or we test Agricola?).
RPG nights are similar. I am the DM, but I have never decided alone which kind of game we were going to have, not had another player. We discuss (are we going to do yet another dungeon crawl? Are we visiting the Planes?) and we find consensus (maybe a dungeon crawl in the planes?). Same thing about rulings, we are there to enjoy the night, if somebody doesn't agree with a rolling we discuss it briefly and we go on.
If I have understood right, game theorists call it a session zero, I call it a social contrat, and I seriously recommend it. Because if everybody is on the same page about it, game master agency and player agency aren't really problems.
Or maybe I live in a Carebears and Unicorns world and that's why I have never experienced this problem, of course...
