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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MonkeyDragon" data-source="post: 3246317" data-attributes="member: 23929">I have Session 0.At the beginning of a campaign, Session 0 is for handing out handouts for my homebrew and discussing the character creation guidelines.  Then it's time to talk about what they want.  In the past, I've come up with a list of stuff (silliness, serious rp, dungeons, cities, wilderness, traps, peril, etc) and had the players rate them 1-10 on how much of it they'd like to see.  I also try to get goals for the character and some background so I can incorporate stuff into the game.In my group, I rotate the DM chair for the early game with another DM.  The game I just started is the first time I've actually been able to continue the old game with the same players and characters as before.  We still have the same Session 0, though.  This time, I talked about the things on my list and took a few notes to get a feel for what they wanted.  The handouts were updates of the homebrew.  The chat yielded some good stuff.  For instance, I the PCs have been pretty mercanary types, in it for themselves or possbility of reward.  They'd gone on a mission of goodness, but were still pretty out for gain.  I found out in the discussion that they WERE very interested in having some adventures where they did good things for the sake of goodness, and were ok with situations where they couldn't expect much of a reward.   I also asked how they felt about facing (seemingly) overwhelming odds, or being severe underdogs, because the last thing I wanted was to make an adventure where they were captured by overwhelming foes and struggling to survive chained in a dungeon if my players can't stand that sort of thing.  I found out that a TINY bit of that would be ok, but I shouldn't include much of it.After the discussions, we had a recap of last season, and then the PCs got to pick up more or less where they left off.  The only rule was, it was to be a strictly roleplaying day.  No combat.  At all.  So if you pick a fight, you lose.  Don't pick fights.  This was so I could concentrate on the process of building a campaign without having to have encounters ready for that first day.  The PCs split up to gather some more information about the quest they were going on.  One PC, of course, wandered off alone.  He's 15 miles from the city, now, tracking down bandits.  When we stopped, the others had just figured out that he'd left and are tracking him down.It's perfect.  Now I can have an easy startup bandit killing adventure before delving into the meat and bones of the new season.</blockquote>

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