How to Run a Session Zero for Dungeons and Dragons 5e

today we're going from zero to hero we're gonna show you how to set up your next Dungeons & Dragons campaign for success with an awesome session zero [Music] greetings my name is Monty Martin and I'm Kelley McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes and today we're taking a look at our tips for running session zero for your next campaign now holding a session zero is perhaps one of the most often recommended best practices for every Dungeons & Dragons group there's a lot that goes into the session zero though so Monty and myself are going to discuss today our pro tips and tricks to really get the game going in your next session zero with that let's get rolling so what is session zero well many people have heard of session zero before it's almost impossible to talk about Dungeons & Dragons or even roll a d20 anymore on the internet but then someone immediately chime in and saying that a session zero is a good idea but what exactly is it and what are you supposed to do during a session zero a session zero is where the DM and the players meet up for the first time to discuss the expectations of the new adventure that they're about to set out on session zero is a special game session that is held before the campaign proper begins there's no anticipation that you'll actually be playing D&D in its traditionally realized form the things like exploring dungeons having combat encounters role-playing with non player characters these are put aside so the focus can be on hashing out the details of the social dynamics of your group the rules and house rules for the campaign and creating the characters and deciding on the campaign premise this is also a great time to decide who's going to bring snacks and when and where is the game going to be happening section zero is all about setting expectations as far as we can tell the idea of a session zero has existed for a really long time but it's only been recently that it's been called session zero as far as we can tell session zero kind of evolved out the idea of a character creation night creating characters for a role-playing game campaign can be a time-consuming process there's a lot of factors in character generation world building setting up the campaign premise it turns out that doing character creation and having a conversation about expectations is a great way to prevent many of the common issues that plague our PG groups things like scheduling problems disagreements over the rules poor group cohesion and mismanaged expectations leading to a campaign that people aren't having fun with can all be prevented by having an excellent session zero and that's really the evolution into session zero from just a character creation night character creation night was a focus on everybody builds their characters and then you get into the game but it's really important to have a night to discuss what the rules at your table are what the character cohesion is going to be between everybody that's playing who's bringing what to the game sessions where is it going to be held how often are you going to play these are all very important questions that you need to address in your session zero to just get everybody onto the same page because you're gonna have a lot more fun playing D&D if everybody has the same idea on what they're showing up to do now there's no one-size-fits-all formula for session zero a session zero held between brand new players and a new Dungeon Master who've never played D&D together before it's gonna be really really different and need to address some different things than a session zero that's held by a group of friends who have been playing Dungeons and Dragons together for decades that said there's a few key things that we think that every session zero needs to address at least a little bit and we're gonna cover those in detail this all boils down to five main things that we think that every D&D group should look at when getting ready for session zero get to know each other determine the schedule agree on the rules and role-playing establish the campaign premise finally create your characters these five things are the things we'll make up almost every session zero so moving on to our first point get to know each other one of the biggest pitfalls that Dungeons & Dragons players have is assuming that everybody has the same preferences desires and interests in the Dungeons & Dragons game and this simply isn't true people have fun in different ways and get excited about different things in D&D personally I am a big fan of role-playing role-playing is my favorite aspect the social aspect of being a different character and kind of working my way through the stories that are presented to me that's my favorite part above combat above exploration I love role-playing a character other players just want to have a laid-back environment where they can slay some orcs and maybe solve a few puzzles having a conversation about what everyone's preferences are what kind of style of campaign worlds that they enjoy playing in what kind of characters they enjoy creating is really really important especially if you're playing with people that you've never played Dungeons & Dragons with before but even if you're playing with a group of old friends this can be a really great time to discuss the things that you've never tried or never done what I'd like to do here is just start by asking my players a few questions about their preferences with Dungeons & Dragons one mistake that you might make is asking upfront questions like do you prefer combat or social aspects or exploration I want to I'm attempted to give my group a list of options and say pick the one that is your favorite they actually added another option of that list that said all of the above and they all picked that one which really accomplished nothing for me as a DM and determining whether I should add more combat to my game add more social encounters it really kind of just left me up in the air and then saying we like to play D&D so keep doing that instead of using a questionnaire I find that this is a better opportunity to ask really pointed questions of the players and then really listen to them as a dungeon master I like to ask questions like what is your favorite thing about Dungeons & Dragons or what is one thing that you've always wanted to do in Dungeons & Dragons but never done before you're gonna get some really interesting answers here that are going to reveal to you a lot more about your players and their preferences than if you just simply ask them a questionnaire or had them rate their answers for example if a player answers the question what have you never done in D&D before that you've always wanted to do with an answer of I've never slain of God before to me that paints a very vivid picture of somebody who enjoys combat enjoys fighting epic monsters and enjoys a narrative that pushes the limits of what you're capable of doing in D&D on the other hand if the player answers the question by saying I've never built a castle before that's a very different player that has some very different desires about Dungeons & Dragons other great questions to ask are what are you excited about in this upcoming campaign or why do you love Dungeons & Dragons these questions can reveal so many insights for you as a DM to then place into your campaign to make it better for the players joining you sometimes though the answers to these questions reveal that there's a deep divide in your group you might have two players that are interested in a high social intrigue political campaign and two others that just want to hack it / dungeon crawl it is really difficult to make players with those divergent interests happy in the campaign at the same time and sometimes it might reveal that you've got a difficult decision and might need to split the group so that people can get the campaign they really want to play at the same time I would say that when answering these questions you might get somebody who's really really gung-ho about combat somebody else who's really really excited about the social aspects that doesn't mean that they can't enjoy the same campaign either there is this kind of level for example when I talked about myself enjoying the social aspects it doesn't mean that I don't like to throw down spells in combat it just means that I get really excited when I get to use the social aspect of the game so for me a campaign that is combat heavy as long as there are those social moments peppered in I will be satisfied because I have fun with all aspects of the game so when you're listening to your party also be aware that you don't have to divide them because of differing opinions another thing that can be a really important thing to discuss is if there are any things that your players don't like or aren't interested in if perhaps you're interested in running a campaign about kingdom building with a very complex sub system for running the nation and your players really aren't interested in that and they tell you we just want to keep a simple campaign that's good things to know right now the next thing you need to do is determine your schedule determining the schedule is probably one of the single most important things that needs to be done during session zero and also one of the ones that rarely gets the attention that it needs and this is for one simple reason nothing ends more Dungeons & Dragons campaigns in disappointment than a scheduling nightmare there's nothing worse as a DM then putting hours of work into setting up the next chapter of your campaign trying to get everybody together and then realizing that at the last minute two or three people in your group can't make it and all of a sudden it's months before you're able to play again this can make everybody at the table lose interest in the campaign forget what's going on in the story or even just get angry and upset about what's happening why can't this person make it why can't we schedule a night why are we even playing D&D I've heard these things from people trying to get together to play Dungeons & Dragons it's utterly demoralizing for a DM when you've spent so much time planning your campaign only to have a few players cancel at the last minute well real life will always be a factor and there's always emergencies it really is important to discuss as a group what the cancellation policy is going to be what the consistency with the schedule needs to be and what kind of commitment is expected from everybody at the table the reality of the situation is that some players and Dungeon Master's are willing to move things around in their own personal lives to make room for Dungeons and Dragons and some people can't do this this is what causes scheduling conflicts in D&D my personal recommendation is that the group should come together and decide on one day of the week that will always be the DND night whether that's 6:00 p.m. on Tuesdays or 7:00 p.m. on Sundays or noon on a Saturday keep the day of the week and the time consistent if a few people can't make it cancel for that week and try for the next week constantly moving around which day of the week you're going to have the game session in order to accommodate different people's schedules is always going to be frustrating and will consistently lead to disappointment rather than successfully scheduling the next game this method has worked very well for Monty and I when I first started running my D&D games I remember making the statement that we would just see what day works best for everybody we actually weren't able to schedule a day for a few weeks until finally I said you know what we're doing Monday nights at 6 o'clock and everybody adapted their schedules so that they could make that day and it worked much much better for us than us trying to find a day we were all off every week what really sucks about this is that sometimes this means that you have a really good friend who just can't make the scheduling work and it's more important to be honest about that situation and accept the fact that it's gonna be difficult for your good friend to make it to this game session but if everyone else can make it at that time it might be the better decision to move forward with the time that everybody can make and commit to rather than try to revolve the entire schedule around one person who has an erratic schedule another thing to pay attention to when you're talking about scheduling is how long you expect the campaign to last for it's good to set these expectations so that the players know whether they're about to get into a few week adventure or if this is gonna be something that will span years a person's dedication to the game may change based on how long they need to commit to it some people are very enthusiastic about your long campaigns where others may not be able to do that this combines with the rate of play if you're playing weekly it's very easy to set the expectation that you're going to play a campaign that's gonna go all the way to level 20 because you'll have the consistency of play to keep up with that and you might actually get there but if your campaign only meets once every couple weeks or maybe only once a month setting the expectation that you're going to play all the way to level twenty is extremely unrealistic if you're only playing once a month it will take you years and years to get to level 20 and that's something that not everybody can do yeah without the without the team I changing I just wouldn't plan a campaign like one of the things that many tension masters want to do is plan where the campaign is going to go and if your campaign is only going to meet once a month there is no purpose in you planning a campaign that it's gonna go all the way to level 20 because even if you have a really aggressive way of leveling up the characters it's still gonna take you years to get there and the reality of it is is that if you're planning on your campaign lasting for years and years and years and years that's really something that you can only plan for with a group that has been very very firmly established if you're bringing together a brand new group of people that have maybe only played together erratically or have new friends that you're making through Dungeons & Dragons set an expectation for a shorter campaign one that might only last two or three months this is really good if you're playing with a group of friends at a university or college or at high school or a summer long campaign even as adults playing D&D one of our friends recently had a baby and they are we had to write them out of our campaign for the time being he hopes to come back but life happens the other thing to be realistic about is are things like summer holidays and December and New Year's always have big impacts on this and being realistic and honest with your schedule saying yeah we're not going to try and schedule a DND Day game in the last two weeks of December or the first week of January because everyone's schedule is crazy at that time or if you're on a school schedule trying to schedule things during exams or at the beginning of the school year that's madness acknowledge that those times are madness skip those weeks and come back into it when you can be consistent up here in the great white north we live in the land of legalization and this is a really good time to discuss things like alcohol and other substances at your table as your players might have different preferences regarding their use it's also good to discuss who's bringing what snacks what do you go doing about food when you play and just establishing these policies so that there's a clear understanding and there's no surprises when somebody shows up and says I ordered pizza and then somebody else is like oh I got us subs that happened to me a few weeks ago and now I realize we need a consistent food plan going forward or when everybody brings two bags if Nacho Cheese Doritos I mean I'll eat them all yeah yeah but like that's - I'm not gonna feel good about it I think it's snack policy is actually really important because we ran into a situation where everybody was bringing like a box of cookies and a bag of candy and we had so much junk food at our table I thought buy this yeah everyone felt disgusting by the end of the night and we had to be like guys we need tonight and we had to say we need to stop bringing so much junk food to the game session because everyone was feeling fat somebody bring a veggie tray it never gets eaten no we still hate only the junk food so once you've set your schedule and your policies regarding things like dinner time it's time to actually get into the meat of the rules and role playing of your campaign there's a lot of rules for D&D but every table handles them differently you might have homebrew content that you're going to include you might have House Rules or you might just be using a new system such as the sanity system or something else from the dmg that you want to implement into this campaign that the players may have never experienced before it's good to take this time to talk about these ideas you might even consider playing a role-playing game that isn't Dungeons & Dragons regardless of the specifics it's important to have agreement on them and players this is your opportunity to tell the dungeon master what your preferences are if your dungeon master is saying oh I want to use all these house rules for spell casting and you're looking at them being like I don't like this speak up be honest this is the time to change things before they become a problem later if the dungeon master is saying oh I love this critical fumble table that I just generated and you're seeing all the results on there going wow this is really lethal this is the time to discuss these things rather than four sessions in someone's rolled a string of critical ones and is now having their character decapitated by their own great sword the DIA may also have some ideas on what character options they're going to allow or not allow in their game it's important to be aware of this before you come up with some unearth Arcana race and class combination that the DM says I don't really think that fits our setting this is also a good time to discuss expectations about what is the power level of the characters is it okay if people min/max their characters or are there certain expectations regarding role playing out multi classing how is the D I'm gonna handle things like alignment and illusions are you going to use miniatures and a map or are you just gonna stick to theater of the mind there's a lot of things to consider here and the list can go on and on it's important to address a few of these sticky issues in the rules and in fact one of the most important ones is gonna be just how stringent you're going to be with the rules at the table our thing's gonna run by the book or are you gonna be open to a lot of in the moment improvisation and this goes hand-in-hand with the style of role-playing that you're gonna be using at the table are all the players expected to adopt an accent and speak in character all the time are you gonna have a more laid-back environment where it's appropriate to describe your characters actions in the third-person finally you want to make sure that you set the guidelines for any social rules that you have at your table you want to make sure that all the players around the table treat each other with respect if some of these things might be simple house ruling things like please remember to put a coaster down for your drinks not on the game mat or be careful with the miniatures or don't roll metal dice on the wooden table if there's any other preferences with Mirage 2 rules or policies now's the time to discuss them make sure that those things are all very clearly set now so that there's not an ugly surprise a couple sessions in when someone wants to do something or try something or does something that the other players were hoping wasn't going to be a part of the game the next thing you're gonna want to look at is establishing your campaign premise now often this process begins before session 0 when the dungeon master says hey I want run Dungeons & Dragons I've been thinking about running this awesome module or setting it in the ever on setting or I want to run cursive strawed or I have an awesome homebrew idea for a campaign in mind you might include handouts as a DM to let your players know what you're thinking and what some of the key locations or areas or places that they might explore might be but also you may not want to hand out too much and you may want not want to go overboard on over explaining your campaign premise now this is also where the players preferences that you discuss in the first step might have an impact because it's become increasingly a strategy for Dungeon Master's to prepare more than one campaign premise particularly if you're planning on running a module you might use the discussion that you had back when you're getting to know each other to decide which of the official D&D modules you might want to run if players are interested in gothic horror and a great villain and some really great role-playing opportunities you might play curses straud whereas if you're interested in a more traditional dungeon crawl something like dungeon of the mad mage might be right up your alley instead so a lot of DMS might include handouts they might have presentations or even music picked out to play during the campaign they might deliver this all to the players to let them know exactly what they're in for presenting all these materials helps the players get inspired for creating their characters and gives them the information they need to ground their characters in the setting it's also a great time to discuss how things like gore violence and sexuality may be depicted in the campaign you want to make sure that everybody at the table is comfortable with the level of intensity that you're going to be providing in your campaign setting overall this is a fun creative opportunity for everyone to discuss how their preferences play into the different ideas that the dungeon master might be presenting it can be an opportunity for the dungeon master to revise or refine a few of their ideas and I really like to use this as a great moment to talk again about my players expectations because the players are going to give you as a dungeon master way more ideas they're gonna be saying things like oh I'm so excited to explore skull mountain or I can't wait until we get to the jungles of child or that character or city or place or monster sounds fantastic if your players are already talking about the things that they're excited about you definitely know the things that you need to plan for in your adventures so listen very carefully to them because they might be giving you ideas that you can use later on now that you've done all of these other things it's time to create your characters and with everything else that we've talked about in mind this is a great opportunity to not only design the character that you're hoping to play but talk about how they're going to relate to each other which is a very important aspect in how the group dynamic is going to work party cohesion and player character motivation are one of the biggest stumbling blocks that can be addressed in session zero and one of the house rules that I use when I'm creating the characters is I as the dungeon master place the responsibility on the players to decide how their characters know each other and why they're working together this gives me the seed that I use to start my campaigns off and really offloads a lot of that cognitive load onto the players and in my experience I find that having the players do this usually yields more compelling interesting and meaningful relationships between the characters that can be explored and developed over the course of the campaign then any sort of forced rationale I might impose on the group for why they're working together that's not to say this is the best way of handling it sometimes it is interesting to start the campaign off with all the players as prisoners or mercenaries who have all been hired for a job don't know each other at all but I really do like using this as an important way of establishing party cohesion and I find that it's been so successful for me in my own campaigns that it's my go-to way of kicking things off even if you are gonna start a campaign with all of the characters in prison having them meet for the very first time it's still important in my experience to tell them that there needs to be a reason that they would work with each other even if they're gonna meet for the first time when designing your characters why would you guys work together it's a very important question that needs to have an answer because otherwise you could have a party of people backstabbing each other the whole campaign if that's what you're going for that's awesome but if you want to have everybody work together I've also found that role-playing is easier when you can bounce the role-playing concepts off of other people at the table if two people at the table have a history together with their character backstories it's much easier to bounce the role-playing back and forth giving both people an opportunity to help each other out in building their characters up one thing that's really important in this stage is thinking about the characters in relationship to the campaign premise and again the expectations that you set earlier on when you were discussing your preferences I've often told my players very explicitly that a character that isn't willing to get their hands dirty or a character that isn't willing to get on the wrong side of the law or whatever idea might conflict with the premise isn't appropriate for the campaign and I as a DM have vetoed player character concepts before because I was not confident that that character was going to be the right fit for the group of characters that were being created nor were they going to work necessarily with the campaign premise this is why I recommend to my players that they come to session 0 with multiple character concepts in mind under the expectation that they might choose the best one that fits for the campaign that being said you should never pressure or feel pressure to play a character that you're not excited about if you come with a few ideas make sure that they're all ideas that you are excited to play you do not want to take your favorite character concept that you've been thinking about for a year lay it down just to have the DM say Oh change this this this and this and suddenly it's not even the same character if you get to that point it's better to put that character side for a different setting and try one of your other ideas that you're also excited about as a DM you should be willing to budge a little bit I the DM had a little bit of characters playing Taback see or Eric okra or turtles in my campaign until I came around and allowed a player to play one and it turned out that it had a fantastic bearing on the setting itself and transformed my world in a way that I never expected to so it's important for both players and Dungeon Master's to be a little bit open-minded particularly if the players have very strong preferences maybe you as a DM are working on a campaign premise for a gritty low magic setting where you're adding additional rules for madness and chaos to really capture the dangerous feeling of magic but your players are telling you that they're excited about being a spell slinging wizard an elemental sorcerer a demon pact sworn warlock and a druid and they're all really excited about spell casting and the shackle of these rules on their characters really isn't gonna let their concepts fly that's a case where you might need to go back a few steps and renegotiate things to make sure that everyone's gonna get what they want out of the campaign and their characters it's really important that when you're coming out of the character creation phase that everybody at the table has a clear idea on their goals their motivations their relationships with each other and anything else that's going to help feed into being prepared to take part in the adventure this is gonna create some really great role-playing situations and really gonna foster a lot of creativity and enjoyment in your campaign at the same time with all these things be careful about going overboard and creating more work for yourself as a Dungeon Master if you're presenting a 30-page campaign premise that has tons of details about Laura events that happened ten thousand years ago and conflicts about the creation of the world or as a player character you've written a small novel for your character backstory you might have done too much and part of the magic of Dungeons & Dragons is the discovery and development that happens in actual play the reason why the session zero is a special experience is that we get to work together to hash out really interesting details and plant some fantastic seeds coming into a session zero with fully realized deeply detailed and fleshed out components actually works against that because the more solidified the ideas are in your mind the more that you've put in with writing the more difficult it can be to make those concepts work together in a cohesive and interesting way keep an open mind and come into session zero with a sketch or a skeleton then build the flesh onto it and set sail to adventure from there to wrap up we've looked at a lot of different parts of session zero and how you can use them to amplify the starting of your game but this may differ depending on whether you're a group of brand new players setting out for the first D&D adventure you'll ever take or a group of established players who have been playing together for years I find that session zero can be a little bit less useful for a group of very new players or very experienced ones oftentimes if I'm introducing Dungeons & Dragons to a brand new group of players it may be better to come in with pre generated characters and a quick premise and get them into the feeling of playing the game right away rather than spending a whole time on session zero conversely experienced players who've been playing together for a very long time start to take a few things for granted and unless your campaign is doing something very very different such as playing a new rule system or using a lot of new house rules you might be able to do a lot of the sessions your tasks over email or a chat or text message so that you can actually get to playing in your first game session of your new campaign so this is our look at session zero for Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition we hope that this helps you kick off your next adventure with a bang and of course we would love to hear any tips and tricks that you might have for a successful session zero in the comments below of course if you want to watch our live campaign dungeons of dragon hime you can check that out on Twitch the campaign airs every Tuesday night at 6 p.m. Eastern Time at twitch.tv slash dungeon underscore dudes and if you need some adventure ideas to start your next campaign you can check out our video on five ways to start an adventure right up over here and if you're looking to develop your diem philosophy a little bit more you can check out our 10 principles for Dungeon Master's right up over here please subscribe to our channel so you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 322,960

Rating: 4.9493561 out of 5

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: 2MA-z5Ai-bQ

Length: 31min 29sec (1889 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 17 2019