How to Run a Session Zero in D&D

this game is too hard I was expecting a more casual game experience you are such a baby and you know what I want to know is why I'm finding out just now about all of these homebrew rules this is bullcrap and you know that the characters that we made they don't really work that well together all you wanna do is kill things welcome to the vm lair I'm Luke Hart and I've been a dungeon master since high school on this channel I give practical dungeon master advice that you can implement at your game table today in the lair we'll be talking about how to run a session zero now a quick disclaimer I'm going to be talking about how I personally do it and I'm sure there are lots of other legitimate ways to go about it anyway as session zero is a game session with all of the players and dungeon master present that occurs before you actually start playing your campaign it's used to set expectations for the game and get everyone on the same page this is going to help ensure your DD campaign is primed for success that said I strongly recommend that you don't skip the session zero and if you've already begun playing and you didn't have a session zero that's okay no judgement here you can still take a little time at your next game session to cover some of the important things I'm about to go over first the pre session zero and the pitch wait what this is getting confusing right so before even having a session zero I suggest a little homework you can call it see the session zero is technically kicking the campaign off with your group but before you're ready to do that you need a little information from your players first you need to understand what kind of DD games they playing gritty realism beer and pretzels horror high fantasy low magic high magic Monty Hall and so on and so forth and then ask them if there's anything they are particularly interested in doing in the game for instance your players might decide they all want to play mercenaries working for a guild or dragon hunters or people stranded on a strange Island you can get this information best through conversations though email can work for this as well and then you take this information and develop a campaign idea from it by taking into consideration your players desires you're more likely to create and run a campaign that they will enjoy the caveat to this of course is that it must also be a campaign that you the dungeon master will enjoy running I mean you're a part of this group too and your wants and needs are just as important as your players if you hate hate hate gritty realism and horror don't for the love of all that is holy agreed to run that game I mean you could but you won't be having any fun you'll be working your butt off prepping a game that you won't be enjoying and don't you think that your lack of enjoyment will come across in the game making it rather suck in comparison to running a game that you actually like it will and the game will suffer as a result something you could do too is develop two or three campaign pitches for your group and then see which one your players want to play again each of these should be something that you actually would enjoy doing and then once you've decided what campaign you'll actually be running you need to go prep your happy little butt off this is part of being a dungeon master that gets little recognition or appreciation but it's the most critical prep the main ideas of the campaign and create the first adventure then and only then are you ready for your session zero now at your session zero the first thing I suggest going over with your players is describing your game style and the flavor of the campaign this is where you confirm like gritty realism or beer and pretzels you let people know things like hey if you're a murder hobo in my games expect me to run my game world like a real world where there will be consequences for running around and killing everybody or you let them know something like hey guys I roll my dice out in the open and I play them as they lie and if you die you die don't expect me to jump in and save your pc's that's up to you or you can tell them that this is a casual and relaxed game I'll be playing the rules kind of loosely so please don't get all wound up if we don't do everything by the book the second thing I recommend explaining to them is the important information about the setting the game takes place in for instance all of my games take place in the Forgotten Realms because that's the setting I started using back in high school and I just kind of stuck with it so I will tell players important things they should know about the immediate area the game starts in the immediate area don't go on a two-hour lecture about everything in the setting you will bore your players to death and they won't remember hardly any of it anyway so don't bother which leads me to an important point handouts don't just tell your players about the setting give them crap that helps them remember otherwise guess what they'll forget because player brains are practically made to forget important details about the game world wait tonight that I just insulted most of my viewers I should definitely cut this out and post but I probably won't so examples from my recent dragon heist session zero they started out in the yawning portal in as their hub of operations so I gave them a handout with photos of notable NPCs from the inn and I had each player pick one of them as a friendly acquaintance and then I gave my players copies of the code legal of Waterdeep you know so when they started to break laws and get arrested they wouldn't be able to give me the excuse of you never told me actually none of my players are like that but whatever then I gave them a map of Waterdeep and gave them a brief explanation of the different rewards in the city finally I gave them a quick overview of important information about Waterdeep you know who's in charge what the government is like major landmarks and buildings that might interest them that sort of thing and before you think that I'm little too much of a genius the module actually already had handouts from any of those things so I just made copies of them and then pass them out but if there had not been handouts I would have totally made my own up for sure by the way this video is sponsored by my patrons over on patreon in particular I want to give a huge thank you to the following patrons Aaron glom mr. lemon pie Seth M theta tag and William also just so you know one of my patreon tiers enables you to play D&D twice a month with me as your Dungeon Master and as of the recording of this video there are only two spots left so if you're interested in supporting the channel and maybe even playing some D&D with me you can check out my patreon page at the link down in the description the next thing I suggest doing at your session 0 is explaining any homebrew rules you may have for the game this is an important point because your homebrew rules may influence the types of characters that your players create for instance if you've nerved elves into oblivion your players deserve to know that before they create an elven character I personally don't have too many homebrew rules because mostly I like players to be able to depend on the player handbook as a source of truth for how the rules work the few homebrew rules I do have were made to correct imbalances or problems in the game and most of them were decided based on player input now for my dragon eyes game I was introducing two new systems to the game luck points and lingering injuries so I made sure to explain them to my players next now that you have given your players most of the important information needed to inform character creation it's time for your players to create their characters the game table like literally give them blank character sheets have them roll stats and create their characters I think there are lots of advantages to having players create their characters together one of which is the simple question of classes most groups I played with like to make sure they have made rules covered and everyone doesn't show up with like a rogue or something this also gives them the chance to talk about things like if their characters and know each other already for instance in my Dragon hai scheme right now two of the characters a war forged a monk and a goblin Archer have known each other for years and the Goblin rides around on a platform that the monk wears on its back cool things like this can't happen if everyone goes off on their own to create pcs players need to talk to each other to come up with ideas like that now I will say this though good luck getting your players to actually wait to create their characters and I was recent session zero all of the players except one showed up with their characters already created and guess what I made their happy little butts sit there patiently while the one player that actually did what I asked created his character but it was okay because the other players had lots of loose ends to figure out anyway the next thing I do is have my players create their backstories right there the table because if there's one thing I've discovered is that if you ask your players to create backstories only about half of them actually do if you're lucky and those backstories that you do get might not even be what you consider a backstory or they'll be like 20 pages long and takes you forever to read them so we create backstories at session 0 and I give them a template for it it's really just a front and back piece of paper with several questions designed to draw out important information about their characters there's a link to that template down in the description for you to use too if you want now I do plan to do a future video about creating backstories and I'll probably walk through why I have those specific questions on my template however for now let's just say that those specific questions will help you as a dungeon master get information about the characters that you can later use in your campaign this is of course assuming that you as a dungeon master even care about backstories and will even bother to use them in your campaign personally I think games benefit greatly when Dungeon Master's incorporate elements from backstories into their games and backstories help players roleplay their characters better but a it's your game so if backstories aren't your thing and your players view them as tedious some torture you don't actually need them I have run games before we're almost no one had a backstory and we still all had tons of fun at this point your players have their characters and back stories created so it's time to start your first adventure I usually try to play for at least an hour or so at the end of my session 0 that way we all leave the session feeling like we actually played D&D a little bit let me know down in the comments if there are other things you like to do at your sessions Eros and click right here to learn how I create campaigns for my groups and next week I'll be telling you a story about a time I threw two rubber asses and - ogre Maggie against a level 12 group and until next time let's play D&D

Channel: the DM Lair

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Keywords: d&d, d&d 5e, dnd, dnd 5e, dnd 5th edition, dungeons and dragons, dungeons & dragons, rpg, role-playing game, roleplaying game, dungeon master tips, DM tips, dungeon master advice, DM advice, the dm lair, luke hart, how to run a session zero in d&d, session zero, dnd session zero, d&d session zero, session zero dungeons & dragons, dungeons and dragons session zero, session zero questionnaire, session 0 dnd 5e, session 0 dnd, session 0 tips

Id: 0blDMlLNKQc

Length: 11min 52sec (712 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019