Dungeons, Dragons, Dice, and a Session Zero Checklist

— by Tyler G.

 

Tabletop role-playing has gotten pretty big lately. As someone who remembers when the hobby was spoken of in hushed whispers, in fear of the dreaded swirlee you'd get for knowing what the Hand of Vecna is, having a map of Greyhawk memorized, or how to handle the Demigorgon, it's nice that the stigma's at least partially faded. Critical Role alone has done a fair bit for the hobby's perception, and together with Stranger Things (and, you know, the pandemic shutting us all inside and making us all shut in nerds for a year) has spearheaded the current boom. Dungeons and Dragons, in particular, is seeing in new players.

But that leads to the usual dilemma of how to get into game mastering, and getting a good group, and the anxiety resulting from that- and one of the key things I feel that people should know about is the general idea of a session 0.

So consider this article a handy dandy little Session 0 checklist for your gaming group.

Wait, What Even is a Session Zero?

The concept of a session zero is fairly old, but I don't think I heard the term used in this sense until fairly recently. The basic idea is that it's the session before the first session of the game, where you try to gather up all the players and chat. This is setting expectations for what the game is going to be like and what everyone wants out of it.

After all, there's no singular right or wrong way to play a tabletop game. The hobby is huge and there's plenty of systems to play.

 

Establish Play Boundaries

One of the most important aspects of any session zero is getting everyone on the same page. This can be as easy as just getting the whole group together to chat about what they came up with if you did character creation separately if this is a group of old (or vouched-for) friends, having the whole party run through character creation together, or it can be as extensive as discussing your elaborate house rules- after all, it depends on the table on what entirely this entails.

What any group should do, however, is establish boundaries on content.

Part of this could- and frankly should- be done during recruitment for the upcoming campaign: describe what kind of game you're going to be running. The expectations of a dark horror fantasy game inspired by something like Drakengard and Berserk are going to be very different from a high fantasy political intrigue game inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire and Final Fantasy XII, no matter what system or game style you're running in.

 

That Means Open Communication

 

Communication is important, and that includes setting exact boundaries on content in the game. Use some kind of safety tools to help set this up easily. The X Card concept is popular, but I personally just prefer being told what topics are best avoided or outright no-gos in the game, via something like the Icks, Squicks, and Picks idea or just being told directly if possible.

People are, after all, people and are a mess of neurotic habits and trauma. We don't know what's a no-go, because we're not mindreaders. We also shouldn't pry on the why of something being a no-go, because that's just basic politeness.

This is a grand glorified game of pretend, but ultimately still a game. The first edition of the Grognard classic Harnmaster from 1986 says it well- never forget human nature and sensibilities. Your real world friends are more important than any game.

People in the real world should always come first. Plot your campaign and main story around the limits of your players and friends. Paying attention to what they have going on is the utmost key for any kind of game- whether you play board games or role playing games or even video games.

You Should Establish Expectations and Get On The Same Page

 

One of the keys to a fun game is that everyone there shares the same table expectations for this new campaign. Getting everybody on the same page is a vital goal to any session zero. This means going over and establishing house rules, deciding if people bring their own food or not, proper player behavior, and generally what one would expect of any other gathering.

One of the most important things is setting up expectations on player expectations, but also managing those expectations. The advent of the "Mercer Effect", named for the dungeon master of Critical Role and his very particular sense of dungeon mastering catered very heavily to his group of professional actors, has created the feeling that all dungeon masters must run exactly like Mercer would.

That's crap. Every table is different. Some tables play highly simulationist systems where you have to keep track of every muscle and gangrene infection, others play a story-focused game where you

Every game master is different, and it needs to be emphasized that you should establish that things aren't going to be exactly like whatever their favorite stream or podcast is like.

Another big thing for a session zero is understanding playstyle preferences. You want to try and get as much of the group as you can onboard with a similar style of play- for example, if you're running a dungeon crawl-focused hack-and-slash game, you're not going to want players to expect a high focus on plot and character interaction or vice versa.

Talk About House Rules, Third Party Publishers, and Homebrew Rules

As I mentioned above, house rules are likely to come up in your game, which are tweaks to the system rules to better fit the group better or otherwise smooth over common problems.

Some pretty common house rules for Dungeons and Dragons 5e are the use of potions as a bonus action (something that's so popular it even made it into Baldur's Gate 3), not keeping track of arrows and other ammunition, not using encumbrance rules, and the idea that if you roll up a sheet via "4d6 (drop lowest)", you have a certain stat threshold to meet- like getting a 9- or you can reroll if you like.

Homebrew is similar- player-made expansions on content, or new content altogether. Probably the most famous examples in the current tabletop roleplaying game sphere are the homebrew classes created for Critical Role and sold by Mercer through the Dungeon Master's Guild, or the highly popular horror-tinged False Hydra monster for Dungeons and Dragons 5e.

Third Party Published content is like big-scale homebrew projects that are usually sold by a third party company like Kobold Press or Green Ronin for use in systems not published by them. These can range from anything as simple as a set of monsters such as what is seen in Kobold Press's Tome of Beasts series for DnD 5e, or whole campaign world books like the Midgard campaign setting- also from Kobold.

Heck, there's even the interesting middle ground with the semi-official, semi third party release of the "Tal'Dorei Reborn" campaign book by Darrington Press which currently stands as the only third party book on DnD Beyond.

You don't have to play with these, of course- you can run a system as written and add to it on the fly if need be. But they can wildly expand your campaign and your player's options, so it's absolutely worth discussing the idea of using some of this stuff at your table.

Go Over Table Etiquette

 

Another important thing for your session zero is establishing proper behavior at the gaming table- table rules basically. This is really just stuff that's ultimately establishing politeness, honestly- some of which is just social norms and all that from the real world (don't talk while shoveling Doritos in your mouth, don't throw a fit over a bad roll, don't flake on a session without giving a heads up, that sorta thing).

What table etiquette usually means is what's okay when you start playing the game itself. This usually means, in my experience, things like whether or not phones should be muted, maybe some kind of stimulation thing if a player has a stimming thing from Autism or something, focusing on the GM's narration or other player's actions (which you should always try to focus on, that's just being polite- remember, they're playing the game too). You'll often also find stuff like old tabletop superstitions like touching other people's dice without being asked (under the belief that this messes with the "luck" of the dice) being discussed here, but I don't think it'll be anything too excessive or overly eccentric that gets brought up.

Just talk with everyone and come up with some expectations on what table behavior should be like. It sounds harder and scarier than it actually is.

Despite It All, It's Still A Game - Remember To Have Fun

 

No, seriously. This is the most solid foundation for any healthy game, regardless of the system or genre you play in.

The best advice you can get on a session zero: at the end of the day, whether you're running a Runequest or a Call of Cthulhu or a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, the game is still a game. It should be fun, for both the players and the game master.

Character death could happen, and it might break your heart but that's okay. That next character you make could be just as great as the one they're replacing. Your group might split apart because of scheduling issues before and that's also okay at the end of the day if you can look back on those memories of that time playing and smile.

Your game won't be perfect. No game is! They're all going to be messy, be it because the GM was taken by surprise by the players' actions or that the dice decided to screw you over and derail your plans, or any other reason. And that's okay!

That's the fun of the hobby- you're just giving it your best and trying to put on the best campaign and adventure you can, the sorta thing you can hope to smile at down the line. And hey, if nothing else, you might get some funny stories to tell out of it too, ya know? Everyone will have a good story about a campaign they played in that went horribly wrong for whatever reason- it's practically synonymous with the hobby's culture.

Just remember it's a game, and any session can go from a good session to a great session- whether it's a session zero or an actual session of your main campaign.

I can only hope this session zero checklist works well and, when the campaign begins, leads to a game experience that you'll cherish for days to come.