How do you like to start a campaign

[Distracted DM]

As @prabe noted, many games provide for this in their toolkit. Over the Wall does it during the life path character building, with a lot of "turn to the player sitting here and ask.." that you could easily incorporate into other games. Others provide background questions that may or may not be somewhat provocative. Eg: Daggerheart has teh following Connection questions for the rogue to ask others:

• What did I recently convince you to do that got us both in trouble?
• What have I discovered about your past that I hold secret from the others?
• Who do you know from my past, and how have they influenced your feelings about me?

His Majesty the Worm mechanizes "Bonds" between Guild members (the dungeon delving party is formalized as a chartered Guild in the framing of that game), which include things like "Big/Little" or "Best Friend."

Apocalypse World's Sword and Sorcery hack "Warriors of the World Ablaze" has questions on playbooks like:

• Have any of you fought shoulder to shoulder beside me?
• Do any of you truly depend on me for protection?
• I admire practical power. Are any of you, more interested in abstract, mystical, or otherworldly power instead?

Yeah, these are the sorts of things I was looking for. I've improvised a few at session 0's but was never fully satisfied with them.
I don't see a collection of Warriors of the World Ablaze, just playbooks released on the designers patreon. Dang.

 

[Distracted DM]

That said, I'm running D&D 5e/Tales of the Valiant. There are other games that have more structured approaches written into their text.

Yeah, definitely looking for some structure to make use of. Some folk benefit from instruction, some guardrails, they don't jive with open-ended stuff as well.

 

[zakael19]

Yeah, these are the sorts of things I was looking for. I've improvised a few at session 0's but was never fully satisfied with them.
I don't see a collection of Warriors of the World Ablaze, just playbooks released on the designers patreon. Dang.

Oh yeah those were just a handful of examples.

Dungeon World’s SRD is online and you can look at the class bonds questions for inspiration, and Homebrew World (a hack of DW for quick play) is available online with a variety of example questions to ask each other.

When I’ve developed my own, I try and look to:

• premise, do I want to reinforce a theme of the campaign or world?
• class/playbook/etc, do I want the question to assert something about how that character’s relationship to their class works?
• whimsy, sometimes it’s fun to toss stuff out there that just adds a bit of flavor and character - things about music, cooking (“who dreads when it’s my time to cook?”), etc. they tell us something about the character by the player picking that one to ask, and to answer.
• provocative but also inside the character’s head. Shared secrets, wariness or distrust, etc.

 

[dragoner]

What tools do y'all have for establishing connections between PCs at session 0?

I use connections, with a sentence, or three of how you know each other, and take a skill point (max of two connection skill points).

 

[hawkeyefan]

What tools do y'all have for establishing connections between PCs at session 0?

So, a lot of them are game dependent.

Stonetop, for instance, has a series of questions that are asked about the town and the people in it. The group answers these together and comes up with NPCs to fill the major roles in the town (blacksmith, publican, midwife, etc.). Then each playbook has questions that are asked specifically for that player. For instance, the Judge acts as the Chronicler of Stonetop… and so he gets to determine how these records are kept, and gets to determine the features of the Judge’s Vault, which is where the records are kept. The Ranger is asked about a threat that they came across in the Great Wood that left them greatly worried… what is it? Why did it unnerve him so? That kind of thing.

In DIE, there are again questions asked of the group, and then questions asked of each player. Finally, there are a series of questions that the GM chooses to ask one specific player, and then each of these has a follow up. So the first may be "There was something you treasured as a teenager... a girlfriend, a car, a friend, a pet... what was it? What made you treasure it so?" and then the follow up may be "That thing you treasured? You lost it. How? Why was it your fault?"

In Spire, each of the classes have Bond questions, usually about three of them. One is to a PC... it asks a question that establishes a bond between this PC and one of the others. The other Bond questions establish relationships between the PC and some NPCs. For example, the Knight must take a Bond with his Squire... and he needs to decide if the Squire is a wide-eyed optimist, or a world weary pessimist.

At this point, I've run enough of these kinds of games that I feel like I have a good idea of how to apply this method in a game where it's not present. You just use what the players offer and build on it. Let them come up with NPCs and then use those in play. Let them come up with organizations or religions. Bring such creations into the setting, and use them to prompt questions to other players about their characters.