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Session Zero
EltonJ:
Do any of you go through session zero in your campaigns? Keith Baker talks about session zero for Eberron Campaigns (and yes, I scanned through it).
Hurin:
Definitely. I find it very useful for Rolemaster, since character creation is one of the most complicated (if not the most complicated) aspects of the game.
Vladimir:
--- Quote from: EltonJ on June 12, 2022, 04:54:46 PM ---Do any of you go through session zero in your campaigns? Keith Baker talks about session zero for Eberron Campaigns (and yes, I scanned through it).
--- End quote ---
All the time. Assembling a party and determining common goals is something I've gone through with just about every party I've joined. Sometimes, the GM has given the party enough backstory to build on (one party had all members start out as slaves) in order to get the party motivated to work for the same goals. I do that kind of brainstorming with every party, to determine how far they are willing to go.
In a series of campaigns, with a world map design by the game creator, the party always agreed that the ultimate goal was to change the world map, not merely political lines but physically, such as change a desert into a forest or level a mountain range.
Lately, I ask the other party members about their short-term and long term goals and figure out how the party could meet those goals.
After looking over the article, nothing is groundbreaking but for GMs it offers a lot to think about when starting a campaign with new players. I've played with virtually the same people for almost 50 years so I know most of the people I game with, their gaming styles, what they like to order for lunch, the names of their pets, etc.
jdale:
For my most recent game, I gave the players the setting and the objective. I worked with them on character histories. For the ones that actually did it (not all of them), I gave them contacts based on those histories. They created some connections but they were unified by their employment (which in this case is hunting down cultists for the state). This game is relatively sandbox-style in terms of the order they do things and how they approach problems.
For the previous game (which is still running), I gave them the setting but there was no objective yet. They came up with characters and then I fit an objective to them. We had some discussion about character histories and then I took their respective patrons and allies and made those individuals allies of each other, so even though many party members had never met, they were working on behalf of people who did work together on a common goal. This game actually has a much more defined narrative path, in part because the disparate characters needed clearly defined goals to hold them together.
In general we have handled character histories one-on-one rather than as a group. There's definitely value in doing it as a group, and in other games I've run into trouble because of the lack of cohesion that happens when you don't -- in one case we ended a campaign because of it and made a group decision that in the next game, all the characters would be family, so even if there were conflicts they would have that unifying trait to hold them together. But we have tended to allow party members to have their secrets, for good and ill, so mainly working directly with the GM rather than working out all those characters together as a group.
Cory Magel:
I'll work like this...
1. Give the players a rough idea of what the setting is like, what they can roughly expect and if there are any limitations or things that would be good for their character to know/do (email it to them).
2. Players come up with a rough idea of what they want to do and we sit down and go through creating that character (this part is in person).
3. Players create a backstory and email it to the GM (2-3 page story or an outline if they aren't super creative on the writing side).
4. Let the players know if anything needs to change in the backstory.
5. Secretly work some of the backstories into the overall campaign if possible.
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