D&D 5E "When Starting Up a New Campaign I Always Have a Session #0" (a poll)

[Charlaquin]

"Always"--that's the word I'm struggling with. This is my first-ever campaign as DM, so sure, my current batting average is 1,000, but our n here is 1.

Off to a good start!

 

[Charlaquin]

Yes for me. If nothing else, I at least want to go over the campaign pitch with everyone, inform them of any house rules I want to employ, and brainstorm character ideas. If there’s potential for sensitive content that I don’t know whether someone in my group will be cool with or not, I’ll bring that up as well.

 

[Guest 7034872]

Yes for me. If nothing else, I at least want to go over the campaign pitch with everyone, inform them of any house rules I want to employ, and brainstorm character ideas.

That was something I found awfully helpful: letting players know how I intended to DM, which optional rules I'd use and which I wouldn't, and so on. It made a bigger difference than I'd expected.

 

[Seramus]

I'd never heard it called a 'session zero' before I started hanging out on ENWorld. We always called it a "rolling party."

Takes me a whole week to make a character!

 

[Charlaquin]

Takes me a whole week to make a character!

When you say “make a character” are you referring only to the mechanical decisions (race and subrace; background and characteristics; class and potentially subclass; spell choices if applicable; ability score assignment; starting equipment)? Or are you also including stuff like description, backstory, etc.

 

[tetrasodium]

I try but my efforts seem futile these days in 5e. Either the players know my style & it's not really needed beyond the pitch or the players don't & I would need to teach them how to work together in character creation or somehhow filter out the budding novelists itching to finally "tell your story" with a few sidekicks

 

[prabe]

These days, there's a chance Session Zero is both loose and conducted via emails or something. There is a discussion of what the premises and expectations for the campaign are, and of people's characters (or at least their character concepts).

 

[CleverNickName]

Takes me a whole week to make a character!

We average about 2 hours for character creation. The first hour starts with me asking "okay, tell everyone about your character," and the second hour starts with "okay, roll 4d6 and drop the lowest..."

 

[LordEntrails]

It depends. New players to the group? Yes. Same group as last time and we've agree how the next campaign is going to go? No.

 

[billd91]

It's not always a formal session to start the campaign off, but I usually do have a series of conversations about what we're playing, what sorts of characters fit into the game we're planning, and so on. Some may be as the whole group or subsets of the group. I do like having rolling parties where we all get together to roll up the PCs.