D&D General Session 0 Tips -- What are your favorite session 0 questions/activities?

[Prakriti]

I'm going to be running a Session 0 soon, and I want to make it as fun and as informative as possible. What are some good questions to ask the players? The only ones I really have in mind right now are XP vs. Milestone leveling, and the usual questions about tone (silly vs. serious), etc. But I need MORE, so give me your Session 0 tips!

For what it's worth, the Session 0 is for Ghosts of Saltmarsh. We ran Sinister Secret as a one-off and have now decided to run the rest of the book as a campaign.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think an appreciative inquiry model works best. Rather than directly asking the players what they want out of this campaign, ask broadly about some of their favorite campaigns they’ve played in and what they enjoyed most about them. What are their favorite books/movies/games in the genre and why? Follow up on common elements you notice between different players’ likes, start throwing out ideas about what an ideal campaign for this group would look like, and then refine from those big ideas into some practical, gamable design principles.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

Session 0 is a great time to go over house rules. Whether introducing new ones or getting feedback on ones used in previous campaigns. Players should be made aware of any changes before they make characters so that nothing is surprising during actual play. This includes the milestone vs XP you mentioned but should also include things like what options are legal for characters, any tweaks to mechanics, how down time is handled, etc.

 

[iserith]

Generally I do a Session 0/1 wherein the first half of the session is going over campaign stuff, getting on the same page, and creating characters with ties to the setting and/or plot. Then the back half of the session is actual play that ends on a cliffhanger. That's a good way in my view to give immediate feedback on their Session 0 requests, start strong, ending in a way that leaves everyone wanting more.

If you're working with a regular group of players, there's really not a lot to go over in Session 0. You probably already know their likes and dislikes and what they consent to. So just rehashing that to confirm buy-in is fine, then you can focus on what's different than normal in Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I'm playing in it and it seems fairly standard D&D fare, so there's probably not a lot to cover here either.

As well, "milestone leveling" still uses XP - you just get it for achieving particular goals. You may be referring to story-based advancement where the DM decides when everyone levels based on some notion of the plot's progress. It will be good to make that distinction clear to the players in my view. We use standard XP in our Saltmarsh campaign and the DM has mentioned he felt we were under-leveled from where the game expects us to be, but it hasn't really made much of a difference so far as I can tell.

 

[slobster]

To tie into Charlaquin's point somewhat, my favorite way to get the conversation started on "favorite movies/books etc." is to throw out some of my own favorites as a starting point, often trying to narrow down to specifics by offering the table a choice between two sources of inspiration.

"Okay so we want to go with tomb delving and ancient ruins, are we thinking more Indiana Jones or Mountains of Madness?"

"We all seem to like the idea of zany fantasy, but is that more like Dark Crystal or the Fairy Tail anime?"

You don't really need to vote on those or anything formal, but just throwing out alternative takes on a given idea can be a good conversation starter.

 

[Stormonu]

Nowadays, I always do the “how does your character already know the others?” I make them know at least one - best is two - of the other characters in the group. This prevents the “you all meet in the bar” cliche and keeps certain troublesome players from avoiding the other PCs and dragging out half a session or more herding cats - I mean, PCs - just to start the adventure. (Really. I had one lone wolf player the rest of the group had to literally track down and the main group had to beat the the lone wolf character to a pulp to join the group. Needless to say, I don’t play with that person anymore, for that reason and several other issues that arose with his antisocial behavior).

 

[iserith]

Nowadays, I always do the “how does your character already know the others?” I make them know at least one - best is two - of the other characters in the group. This prevents the “you all meet in the bar” cliche and keeps certain troublesome players from avoiding the other PCs and dragging out half a session or more herding cats - I mean, PCs - just to start the adventure. (Really. I had one lone wolf player the rest of the group had to literally track down and the main group had to beat the the lone wolf character to a pulp to join the group. Needless to say, I don’t play with that person anymore, for that reason and several other issues that arose with his antisocial behavior).

Same. This is a standard assumption among my regular table and I require this with pickup groups, too. If someone wants to play out the "gettin' ta know ya" stuff or be all standoffish or need to be convinced to go adventuring they can do that in another DM's game.

 

[prabe]

Same. This is a standard assumption among my regular table and I require this with pickup groups, too. If someone wants to play out the "gettin' ta know ya" stuff or be all standoffish or need to be convinced to go adventuring they can do that in another DM's game.

I'm ... less likely to insist on this, but I get the impulse. On the other hand, I tell my players point-blank when and where the campaign will be starting, and that they should be playing characters who are at least willing to be heroes; at the start of the first session, I draw a map, have them put themselves on it, and throw [stuff] at the fan. They get to start being heroes before fifteen minutes have passed at the table. Different ways to get to at least a similar place, I figure.

 

[Quickleaf]

I'm going to be running a Session 0 soon, and I want to make it as fun and as informative as possible. What are some good questions to ask the players? The only ones I really have in mind right now are XP vs. Milestone leveling, and the usual questions about tone (silly vs. serious), etc. But I need MORE, so give me your Session 0 tips!

For what it's worth, the Session 0 is for Ghosts of Saltmarsh. We ran Sinister Secret as a one-off and have now decided to run the rest of the book as a campaign.

There's the usual questions – leveling, play styles, maturity rating / "no-go" topics / the X button, death & dying, handling player absences, allowed content/sources, house rules, and so forth – but the real fun for me is in creating the party, connecting the PCs to each other, and hooking the PCs to the adventure.

I recall one ad libbed session with 3 players where I had them do 5-minute character sketches (while I drew up the setting map), then everyone passed their sheet to the person on their left, and that person got to draw in or write down one thing, and so on around the table, until everyone's sheet returned to them. It was a fun little "exercise" that made for two memorable gaming sessions.

 

[Ulfgeir]

Questions about who their characters are, what are they doing at the location where the adventure starts, and what do they want?

What expectations do the players have on the campaign (length and level of loot etc)