What is a Session Zero?

When I first started DMing I had not heard of this concept and was a little confused by what it was all about. Unwittingly I had done parts of a session zero for each of my players but hadn’t done anything formal.

A session zero is a session before the first official campaign session. There a number of things that you can include in it and not every session zero will go the same way. It is however a place where the following can happen.

The First Meet-up

A new gaming group can be a scary thing and introducing everyone before the first session can be a good way for people to get comfortable. I have played in campaigns where I knew none of the players and only the DM. As a person with social anxiety breaking the ice like this helps as I can take a while to trust other people enough to roleplay with them. As a DM I’d like to see if the people gel and if there are any concerns

Party Balance

Not something I am overly worried about, especially with 5th Edition as a bunch of classes have access to healing and some middle ground classes that can wear several hats. An idea as to what everyone is thinking of playing could expose a glaring omission such as a lack of a spellcaster or frontline fighter though so bear this in mind!

Lore and History

The Dungeon Master should establish the gameworld. If it is a completely new homebrewed world then the players will need a lot of relevant information about places, political systems, Gods and religions as well as social information. Establishing the racial, species and class mix of your world will help roleplaying and character creation. You should also address how abundant magic is along with the levels of magic; Eberron is an area of abundant low level magic but higher level magic is very rare. Any important famous events in the world’s history should be known as well.

All this helps the players make characters that would fit into a DM’s story and off the bat the players would know that a Dragonborn walking into a tavern would probably be the only one of it’s kind that the patrons would’ve ever seen or that a Dwarf would be treated with deference because they make up the ruling class in this area.

Important places can be worked on collaboratively so that a player’s backstory would make sense and have an actual grounding in the world whilst giving everyone a sense of ownership of the gameworld. One of my characters went to a university to study magic and my DM was able to fill in the blanks that I had left in my background as well as tweak some details to fit his world and story.

Themes of the Campaign

Establishing what kind of story this is going to be will also be useful to everyone. If you are going to do a pirate campaign then you should probably let your players know this! This will stop them from making characters who are afraid of water or can’t swim.

Going deeper though together you will decide which alignments are going to be allowed for characters (if there are going to be restrictions). I tend to allow anything but with some stories there are some alignments that are not suitable or even party destroying.

This is also a good place to realise what your players want to accomplish in game, be it a political motivation or finding a specific person or item.

Finalising your Characters

With all the extra information that your players now have they can finalise their characters and backstories. The new information may change the player’s plans for their characters and they may even combine their backstories so they know each other ahead of the first meeting based off of plot points you’ve given them or inspired by another player.

As a DM you’ll now know your party mix and the strengths and weaknesses of the individuals and the group as a whole. This will be useful in creating encounters that will either challenge or make your players feel like unstoppable killing machines!

Optional/House rules

Being upfront about house rules and the optional rules in the DMG and PHB will improve everyone’s enjoyment of the game, session zero is the best place to address them. Flanking is important to talk about as this will decide how the rogue will operate in combat and whether swarming tactics will be at play in game. You don’t want to be in a position where after several combats they stumble into a flanking triggering fight and the players learning they could have been doing this the whole time!

Remember that rules are about consistency and making your world feel real.

I hope you’ve found this useful, let us know in the comments below your experiences with session zeros.
As always: May you roll well!