"Just One More Session Zero Topic," Says GM, Opening Page 11 of Expectations

Item 12, read aloud at the table on the fourth attempt: Expectations Regarding Unsolicited Lore. Please indicate whether you wish to receive lore in advance, at the table, by written handout exceeding one page, or never. If "never," please explain. If the explanation exceeds one page, please summarize.

That item sits inside a packet of eleven tabbed, hole-punched, sheet-protected pages assembled by Priya Sundell, the game master, nine weeks after Session Zero was booked to settle four things: dates, boundaries, who brings snacks, and how the group will know if someone is having a bad time. Those four things are on page one. Everything after page one is everything else, and page eleven is a schedule for revising the sections that produced page eleven.

"I would rather write it down once than have the same conversation four times," Sundell said. The record shows the group has now had that conversation four times, three of them at the table, in writing.

The packet exists on paper because Sundell wants everyone holding the same object, which has made the campaign's most reliably consumed product the sheet protector. Tessa Caldwell, who runs the shop where the group buys dice and, increasingly, stationery, has watched the ledger turn over. "Four boxes of sheet protectors in a month," Caldwell said. "The month before, I sold her dice." The tab dividers are a standing order now. Filed under Laleh's Purchase Order: a campaign's first purchase is no longer a rulebook.

What has expanded fastest is the document's account of itself. Ada Gable, who lives with one enthusiast of tabletop roleplaying and has become an accidental expert in what not to say, read the packet end to end and asked a single question: how long does this take to read aloud at the table? That question is now item 13, with a stated answer of eleven minutes, and the answer is wrong because item 13 was added after the timing was done.

Amendments are handled under the procedure on page nine, which requires a written motion, a second, a 48-hour comment window, and a quorum. Ada Rourke, a fixture of the local standards board whose rulings are quoted far more often than they are read, has weighed in. "An expectation the group cannot locate in the document is not recorded," Rourke said. "It is a rumor with professional formatting." The motion to cap the document at its current length was filed under that procedure.

At the last gathering the packet was opened at 7:04 and closed at 7:54; play followed for forty minutes, and none of it touched lore, solicited or otherwise. Sundell maintains the pace will improve. "Once the framework is done, we never revisit it," Sundell said, and then reopened the framework to log the group's reaction to having reopened it.

On Sunday the cap was approved. It runs one sentence, occupies the top of page 13, and records the expectation that the document grow no further. Getting the wording right took twenty minutes, a motion, a second, and a comment window that closed on Tuesday morning with no comments, which the packet asks everyone to note as a comment.