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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aenghus" data-source="post: 7380575" data-attributes="member: 2656">When I'm starting out a new campaign I generally have a "Session 0" to hammer out a mutual understanding of what the game will and won't be about in general terms, and how the game is going to be run. This especially applies to new rulesets or editions which require some work to get to grips with. Agreement to play a particular game module, or to abide by preset character goals emerging from character generation or acceptance of a certain amount of railroading etc etcIt's a chance for participants to ask questions or express their doubts.At the end everyone resolves to give the game a fair try and accept the agreements for the campaign, or bows out.After that I expect players to abide by their agreements. If after the first sessions a player really isn't enjoying the resulting game, they can drop out. What they can't do is misbehave and disrupt the game. I haven't had to go beyond warnings in my own games, though I would eject a player who persisted in dragging down a game for whatever reason (dislike, contrariness, boredom etc).Now in the case of a "Story Now" game, I'm working from the assumption that the players have all agreed to play the game sincerely and are thus committed to playing out their driving goals, and moving from scene to scene in the process of this in a way that fits the pre-agreed and evolving fiction of the game. For me system matters. Playing a game as if it was a different game goes wrong more often than not. Consciously or not, it's a form of sabotage, violating the group social contract and campaign agreement. For a "Story Now" game, such behavior would include trying to modify or ignore driving goals in ways that break the rules or agreements, or trying to avoid scenes that logically flow from the direction of play, or ignoring the conflict resolution rules to try and resolve in-game problems in different ways. For me this is all classic  "bad player" behavior, selfish play that violates the social contract, and grounds for a private talking to or even expulsion from that game.But there are many ways to run games even under the same system. There are people I would play with only under very limited circumstances, and others I could play anything with and probably have fun (and a few who I will never play with again).</blockquote>

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