Nah brother you did the best you could, 12yos are pains in the ass.

Dude, dealing with 5e players is just the worst. I've spent so much time and energy learning how to deprogram them. 3rd edition was a mistake

I told him the game focuses on the group and if he's not part of the group then he won't be playing, and since that first game he has participated, with few issues popping up. I probably could have been clearer before we even got to the table that if you aren't playing with the group then you aren't playing, rather than just expect them to stick with a group on their first game.

If that's what you took away from my comments, have fun I guess.

I learn about the characters, myself included, throughout the campaign through their actions. Otherwise session one is like that time I asked a coworker about one of his tattoos and had to hear about his sister's murder. That's more of a session two+ thing to me.

Your rules are great, I agree you deserve some privileges when acting as DM because rod the effort you put in. My comment wasn't on that front. But if you are enforcing the rules, and receiving different treatment because of them, you deserve that. But if you are win control of the space, you set the rules and you enforce them. You're a 'ruler' in that context. My point is, your anarchism isn't really at play here.

I've seen it once...it was used against a single player because he refused to play anything but loners who backstabbed immediately and it was mostly used to piss him off enough he quit the group. He should have just been kicked out, sure. I think the dm just hated doing that which was cowardly. Buuut he was gone and that game was much more enjoyable!

Please don't take this the wrong way, but you should read some anarchist political theory if you want to address their actual beliefs. This is exactly the kind of communal structure that anarchists advocate for: a voluntary collective where everyone agrees to contribute to furthering certain goals, values, and objectives. OP is not coercing players to be in their game or to do things their way; they're saying "this is the game that I run, take it or leave it," and the players can join if they share the same goals.

If the person playing is hellbent on being a lone wolf, they shouldn't have entered the game. Roleplaying a character who has trust issues but is willing to give the party a chance to convince them they're trustworthy is very reasonable, though - realistic, even.

Don't forget to hydrate. Must be tired after all that mental gymnastics.

I could tell by your first comment that you didn't care to know about how others think. Ignorance is a lot easier than education, I can't really blame you; I'm just disappointed.

Thank you

Lol you have zero ground to tell me my own table isn't anarchist. I've been doing this for a long time. Go on out of here. I gave you enough of my day.

Standard nonsense here folks, nothing to see. Someone who thought they could "gotcha" an anarchist. You gotta get up about :checks watch: 30 years earlier if you wanna catch me slipping.

Lots of other good points already made, but I'll add my own two cents. When I run a game, I always require players to make characters together. No "go off and make a character in isolation". That's just a recipe for disaster. You can have some ideas already in mind, but nothing is canon until the whole group agrees. Second, everyone needs to have buy-in to whatever the hook is. If the scenario is "you're starting a courier business at the edge of civilization", there are lots of good options. Guy on the run from the law. Lady studying local wild life. Intelligent, local, wildlife. Don't play "guy who doesn't want to be here and is a total killjoy" Third, it's better when characters have connections to each other. You _can_ play the "we just met and we're forming a relationship!" arc, but like "what if we play ourselves in a fantasy world??" **it has been done**. Honestly, everyone should read Fate's "Phase Trio" https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/phase-trio and the rest of character creation.

Ngl, this has never been a problem for multiple sessions for me. As a player or DM. As a player, I show up willing to play characters that will work with a group, even if they don't trust them. Trust isn't necessary to work together. As a DM I remind all players of that fact before they roll one up. If they don't have an idea on how their character would manage that, I'll give them ideas. Yeah, you'll run into players that just don't get that not *every* character has to have the same motivation to work with others, or just refuse to play different characters (instead, they try to play the same character with different names). But those are rare. And, so far, I've yet to run into a player that wouldn't take the "look, you don't have to keep playing with us, but give it a try my way and see how it goes, yeah?" talk and give it a fair try. I've also never had a player quit because of the game not being engaging and fun.

I did this in the very first RPG I played. It was Star Wars and I was playing a smuggler (who thus had a ship). Obviously the GM intended my ship to be used to move the party around. Well, the jedi PC shows up wanting to board my ship as I'm getting ready to leave. I don't know this guy so obviously the first thing my character would do would be to say that and then turn the turrets on when this strange jedi tried to insist on joining me, followed by promptly flying off so he ended up needing to find another way to our adventure. No idea why I was like that. The player was pretty much my best friend at the school, too, so it wasn't anything personal against him. I think I was just trying to hard to do what "my character would realistically do" instead of just playing a game.

Alone and vulnerable, you are murdered by thieves. Make a new guy for the next game.

Biggest pet peeve with players. This is why, during session 0, I make players pre-establish a reason that they not only go along with the party and the planned campaign but also a reason why they *trust* at least two other characters.

My rule on this is very simple; if your character isn't a part of the group, they're not part of the story. That goes for lone wolves, people who betray the party, "evil" characters who work against the party's interests, etc. You make the choices you want to make, you do what seems right for your character, but the moment that means you're not a part of the group, you either figure out a good story for how we're going to fix that, or you hand me your character sheet. It's really that easy. "But thats just what my character would do!" OK, let's unpack that. If that's truly, genuinely the case, if there's no way your character could no work against the group or leave them at this point, then this is how your characters story ends. If that comes twenty sessions into a game, well, waking away rather than betray your morals is a pretty good story if you ask me. If it comes two sessions in then we need to figure out why you're not on the same page as everyone else. But more often, the player simply thinks its the only possible way their character can act in this situation because they're not thinking creatively. People are complicated. Consistency is actually the bane of interesting characters. A good character is inconsistent for interesting reasons. "My character would never trust someone in this situation!" OK, but what if they did? Now we're left with the question of why, and figuring that out is surely going to be interesting. There's also the other side of this coin, which is the responsibility on the GM's shoulders. Yes, your players owe it to each other to try to keep the story moving forward, but you also owe it to them to respect the reality their story takes place in. Don't run a gritty crime game and then expect your players to just automatically trust some NPC that turns up with no bona fides. You actually have to put the work into crafting scenarios where the players can have their characters react naturally and still drive the story. It's a bad GM who pisses their pants and cries because they created something that looks like an obvious trap (whether it is or not) and their players refused to walk into it.