Session 0

inspiration
question

#1

OKAY!
So I’m back on the GM Throne for my :sweden: homies and session 0 is coming up. They have their character concepts done and chargen on point SO… There will be some relationship fleshout in the first we minutes of the session.

I wanted to ask.
What do you guys think is important for the Session 0?


#2

Group cohesion, I reckon.

I’ve just had Session Zero for my Cyberpunk 3535 hybrid, and I had a bute time with Back Story cards (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/138416).

It’s a brand new group, some of whom are newbies, so I wanted to avoid any PVP from the get go. To do this, I removed all the adversarial cards, and only used co-op ones.

The result was a crazy, rambling, intermingled tale that all the players were excited about (everyone had shared their own PC’s back story within days), and on the actual night we played, I genuinely felt like a facilitater for their creativity, rather than shoving them along in the direction I expected things to go.

Hope that helps.


#3

Damn man those cards look cool!

After the relations part I will run them through some Trails that their clans put every young adult through when they are old enough to venture out into the dangerous world.


#4

I backed the Kickstarter and it was their first outing. Highly recommend them! You have to do a bit of prep, but it’s worth it. Good luck with your session zero!


#5

For me the kickoff (zero) session should have heavy coop elements - we talk about my GM style, the world we’re going to play in, what each player would like to see in the game, what things they do NOT want see, talk about safety (X-card, lines, veils, etc), and the like.

For our current 5E game we built out the play area using The Quiet Year a very cool GM’less map building game easily used for world building if you hack it a little. I took everything we did in TQY and expanded it some with my own ideas which I sent to the players as we started playing.

I like to have each character connected to at least one other party member - usually I just go in a circle and ask each PC to make a connection with the PC on their left (or right if I’m feeling like it). I have done the Dresden Files style connections where you “guest star” in other PCs backstory - it uses a 1 thru 5 phase system to create character backstories… very cool though probably a bit much of D&D/ICRPG.


#6

For me, session 0 is all about setting the tone for the campaign. So while the main activity is character creation, what we’re really doing is establishing the aesthetics: can you carry a sword on your back, is Helmut an ok name, are there elves, are there pipes, etc.