[UA] Game Contracts

[Epoch]

On Tue, 14 May 2002, Bryant Durrell wrote:

> On Tue, May 14, 2002 at 07:06:44PM -0700, Royal Minister of Stuff wrote:
> > --- Patrick O'Duffy <redfern at thehub.com.au> wrote:
> > > My campaigns used to suffer from a LOT of assumption clash problems.
> > > A few years back, I started writing up clear outlines and contracts
> > > for my games -
> > 
> > You've mentioned these before and, I'll admit I balked
> > because they sound too corporate.  I'm trying to keep
> > a more open mind.  What would a game contract look
> > like, please? Can you print up a short example and
> > post it?
> 
> It does seem pretty corporate.  But it's pretty useful, too...

Damn straight.  If the word "contract" offends you, don't call it a
"contract."  But I think that the general concept of airing stylistic
decisions before the game is generally handy, and totally crucial for a
group that you aren't very familiar with.

Again, you don't have to call it a "contract," and it doesn't even look
like one.  Here's how I handled my last two campaigns:

"Many Paths" -- At this point, I didn't know /any/ of my players (I had
just moved to a new area, and picked up gamers from an open call).  I had
ten potentials.  I sent out a series of multiple-choice quizzes via email
that asked them what they were looking for in a game.  I gave my own
responses to the questions, but pointed out that I was giving myself no
more than tie-breaking authority.  Stylistic questions were included.  At
the end of that, I had winnowed my list from 10 to 6, because we realized
that certain of the players were looking for a different game from the
rest of us.

Never did I present a document which was "the game contract," but when I
summarized the results of the voting in the multiple choice quizzes, and
broke ties as necessary, we had, essentially, covered much the same ground
that a contract did.

"New Mutiny" -- This was the follow-up game, with a slightly different
group, but one that I knew much better.  I didn't feel the need to jump to
multiple-choice quizzes.  Instead, I presented the group with a number of
different game concepts that I was willing to GM.  We discussed it via
email and settled on one of them.  Then we had a "session 0," in which we
met and hashed out details of setting and game focus.

Again, no formal "contract" document, but there was explicit discussion of
what the game was going to be like.  Since I knew the group better, I
didn't feel the need to have a series of hard-and-fast answers that I
could fall back on and point to if someone complained.

Mike

--
"For a kitten-murdering delusional psychotic, Molly was okay, wasn't she?"
"No, Tim.  No, she f***ing wasn't."
			www.bobbins.org


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