Nice video. I've been gaming long before session zeros were really a thing and am now making a conscious effort to use them more often. I make a point of letting folks know they can message me over social media if there's hard limits they want me to be aware of but aren't comfortable talking about in from of the other players. Session 0.5 is a great way to give players a little rp time after spending a chunk of their play-time sorting stuff out.
After forty years of RPG gaming, I am super glad my hobby (and job!) is evolving into a nice and safe space for players like me. We still have a long way to go, but I can see the changes happening. The useless gatekeeping is still strong though, so we must persevere.
My top tip for session 0, do it over messenger/discord/what's app, the month leading up to the first session. Giving everyone plenty of time to question and understand. Then you're not wasting your 1st actual session sitting around twiddling your thumbs while you wait for the other players to admin themselves.
I always think the best tips for any GM is to have confidence in your world and trust in your players. A session 0/0.5 does a great job establishing both.
Funnily enough, the session 0 we ended up having was never supposed to be a session 0. It was supposed to be a one-off. But the thing is, some players ended up loving and keeping their characters, one character ended up being taken up by a completely different player, and that smaller group just . . . kept going. But the DM never intended the game to go past the single session, and by now the story makes no sense when the session 0 was included, so it's now considered some kind apocryphal time-travel dream that never really happened wink wink. I love it.
Session 0 is a relatively new thing in TTRPGs I have never officially used one but have played in campaigns with a session 0 to start They do seem to help
A game I ran now over a year ago ended when the dm of the other game decided to co-opt the same setting I was using. This by itself wouldn't have been a problem IF he had just asked and given me the opportunity to set up the change as he was clearly too obsessed with critical role whilst I was getting annoyed at the lack of questions from my players on the setting I was running. Had he asked I would have used the event to shift my setting off Exandria and he could have his Bottlequay moved to where Rothenel has been except my character in his game was gone as she was banished from Exandria. All the more evidence that a session zero is so important.
After 10 years I quit being the gm of my group. I'm sick of dnd and my group refuses to try another system/ game so there won't be another Session0 for me.
In all my years, and years, and years of gaming I don't think I've ever experienced a Session 0 (or 0.5). This is a shame as there have been a couple of campaigns over the years that might have benefited from it.
Session 0 is approaching the point of being the most blindly adhered to myth in rpg'ing. Throwing in a session .5 of not really playing is beyond bizarre (to me of course). You can start playing from the first sit down, easy peasy. It is not hard to let anyone interested in joining a campaign I am running or planning to run know how things are in a few minutes. Best starter session always a short initial level 1 foray. As far as 'safety tools' anyone at my table needs to know, and does long before showing up for 3 hours of not playing D&D, that if you need them, my table is not the place for you. Which is totally cool. I have a waiting list, I can only run 2 games a week. It's a game with lots of blood and guts, if you don't like spiders, sorry you might run into Lolth (what a great villainess!). You might run into a torture chamber in the Hall of the Fire Giant King. Backstory need to be in 3 days before we sit down together, 1 page, double spaced at max. Growing a backstory as the world grows works best and meshes better than a 20-page manifesto 8>D So first session we go over the world from 30,000 feet view meet some NPCs at base of operations, or the caravan if travelling and after getting the lay of the land, it's time to start playing the game 8>D
Out of curiosity, what's a good silver bullet to impatient people who don't want to take the time to properly Session 0? I am that person and so are my friends that I play with. I'm frequently quite impatient and I want to at least squeeze some actual game time (like a Session 0.5) into the time slot, so I usually ask people to start chewing on a few core questions in advance, and tell them the theme of the campaign. We recognize that they're useful sessions to have, but that doesn't make it feel any less like a wasted session in the moment. Is it ok and effective to stretch out Session 0's over the introduction of multiple play sessions? Is it better to try do as much as possible individually with players prior to a session? I'd like to hear more thoughts on this, if possible. I'm new to TTRPGs and I'm the GM for a game of Blades in the Dark.
