What I like about this presentation is you frame it as the DM saying what he wants to do and the others players deciding whether or not that works for them and opting in or out. I've seen videos promoting Session Zero in the opposite direction, where the other players decide what kind of game they want to play and the DM being more or less obliged to provide it. While to some extent it goes both ways, of course, the decision about what kind of game you'll play should mostly lie with the DM, who after all has to spend a lot more time with it than everyone else. If the DM isn't playing a game he or she likes, nobody is going to have fun.
100%! I've seen DMs present that kind of advice, and I always just wonder how sustainable that is. If you have a clear vision for a campaign, and you're excited about it, and then you take out all the defining features of that vision to make the campaign work for the maximum number of players, will you still enjoy running that game months down the line? I find it's better to get the right party for the right campaign, so everyone has a good time throughout.
Putting the ‘Master’ back into Dungeon Master… you will live and breathe this game for months, years… your investment and energy will far out way that of your players - even the super keen ones. If you don’t totally love your world and its story options, you won’t stay the course.
As a DM I whole-heartedly agree!! I think we should normalize DMs being a little more "selfish" (for lack of a better word) with our campaigns because we are the ones putting in countless hours of creative prep work into this project while the players just get to show up, have fun, and not think about it again until the next session. For some reason it's become culturally expected of us to do everything for the players' entertainment by providing them with personalized content at the expense of what we as DMs really want to do. Nah, I'm here to have fun too. I already have a full time job and being a DM isn't it. It's a hobby and it's a lot of work to sustain. Especially when nobody else wants to DM and they just wanna kick back and chill instead. Long story short: at my table I let them know what I wanna run, what I don't wanna include, and they need to decide for themselves if they wanna be a part of that or not .
Can confirm, it’s hard to run a campaign without player buy-in and impossible without DM buy-in. It could work, but only if the DM likes the player’s ideas
Key session 0 rule for me is to make sure they start with a common reason for adventuring together. If everyone arrives with a separate and rigid character objective, it usually doesn't make sense for them to join together, and it's difficult for the GM to curate a cohesive story that addresses the players desires. Sometimes I give them the reason, like they each pick another player they're bonded to, or they all came from the same region, or there was some larger event that impacted them equally so they have a common motivation
I'm napping things out to dm my first campaign, I'm going to try to address this by running a quick scene where the party meets as children, I build game mechanics for them to play a sport, then there will be a city wide attack they have to escape from. Session one will time jump into the future to start the campaign where they already know each other
My current campaign (a seafaring adventure) is about 10 sessions away from its end. Glad to have gotten this video to add to my collection of resources with the next campaign approaching. Session 0 is always the hardest part for me. I keep having topics come up mid-session that I realize, in hindsight, I should have covered in the beginning. Thanks for the help!
Loving your content! This came right in time for my return to DM'ing 5th edition next week and was reassuring to find your Session 0 list is pretty much the same as mine. Cheers!
I do most of this list in what I call the campaign briefing. It's a short document that describes the setting & premise of the campaign, themes, the length & even the rules and what kind of scheduling I expect to have. The actual session zero is usually fairly short, since only the players who were interested attend, with character creation and discussions on that. (IRL, I'd throw in the beginning of the adventure as well, but we often play online.)
Top class vid again man, just finished both stories on spotify as well. Waiting impatiently for the next batch to start! youre crushing dnd stuff right now. much props also from Scotland
I am about to start my new campaign in a post-apocalyptic, high fantasy dnd 5e game, that takes place after The Shadow Horde swept through the lands... could have used these tips for the session 0 I held two weeks ago xD Great advice as usual, so will keep them in mind for the next one, mate! :D
@@TalesArcane roughly to level 10-12, so maybe 1,5-2 years. it will take place only 20 years after the end of the war, so the land is still trying to stabilize, so the land will be in chaos, since the war tore open the veil between planes, so rifts appear every so often, letting strange forces and creatures through. they can be walking throught he forest when an ifrit appears. nowhere is safe xD
@@Teraclon very cool! I grew up on D&D, Gamma World and Thundar the Barbarian, so pretty much every game I've ever run has had "post apocalyptic" flavors. I tend to set mine FAR after the "apocalypse" (like 1000 years or so), so that the buildings and bunkers of the past are now dungeons, while the mutations and "genetic experiments" of the past are now the monsters / monstrous humanoids. My current party did battle with a Wight Monk with a cybernetic eye that fired scorching rays as a reaction. Good times >:-]
Doing a session zero this afternoon. Useful resource. Note that the closest thing you have to a quick visual checklist on this video is the autogenerated chapters. I suggest adding some in as the auto generation left out sensitive themes.
I think this is a tremendously helpful template! I will definitely be using this for more confidence in making sure i cover all the bases during a session 0. 😁
If you have been playing with your group for a long time, then having a S0 that focuses on the campaign, style, and characters makes sense. However when ppl complain about the garbage that goes on in their games, and are told that a good S0 could have solved a lot of that, it's not the campaign, style or characters that are the issue. It is the behaviors. A good S0 should be able to bring a bunch of ppl who don't know each other on board to play a game with few behavioural problems. It should be able to on-board a new player into and existing group. A S0 that does not focus on the behavior expectations above all the rest, is likely just a campaign pitch.
Nice video. Personally I find players making characters individually can be problematic. The best parties I had, the characters were created together during session 0, and they "knew each other" before the game start.
I get that! Give me "pre-formed party" over "strangers meet for the first time" any day of the week. I absolutely understand why some players prefer the latter approach, but as a DM I find the first few sessions are so much smoother and more natural if everyone is already acquainted.
I'm starting my campaign in a month and wanted to see how i can introduce them to the campaign, it's a fallout style campaign and uses completely different mechanics, I'll keep this in mind once It begins, thanks a ton mate
Other things for (new) TTRPG players to know/remember: The GM is a player too. Respect everybody else's time. Get on the same page about the type of fun you wanna have together: Is the ttrpg the foreground focus activity, or the background activity to hanging out?? TTRPGs take much more work /engagement than dominoes / Go-fish / Uno.
DMs should conceive of the campaign/campaigns. The players choose which one they want and then each player should have a chance to “yes, and…” their ideas. Rarely the DM but “no, but…” any truly unworkable concepts
Why would a player who normally plays in-person have to play remotely for a session? Could they not just get in their car and drive to where the game is to play in-person?
The point is to remove barriers to long-term commitment. If players know that every second game won't involve a commute, for example, that can be pretty helpful for getting people locked in longterm. For example, on nights when I play, I have to spend just over two hours commuting to and from my DM's apartment. With work and other life commitments, doing that every week could be a bit draining. Doing it every second week? Much more manageable, for me and for the other players who have to cover distance to and from the game.
What I like about this presentation is you frame it as the DM saying what he wants to do and the others players deciding whether or not that works for them and opting in or out. I've seen videos promoting Session Zero in the opposite direction, where the other players decide what kind of game they want to play and the DM being more or less obliged to provide it. While to some extent it goes both ways, of course, the decision about what kind of game you'll play should mostly lie with the DM, who after all has to spend a lot more time with it than everyone else. If the DM isn't playing a game he or she likes, nobody is going to have fun.
100%! I've seen DMs present that kind of advice, and I always just wonder how sustainable that is. If you have a clear vision for a campaign, and you're excited about it, and then you take out all the defining features of that vision to make the campaign work for the maximum number of players, will you still enjoy running that game months down the line? I find it's better to get the right party for the right campaign, so everyone has a good time throughout.
Putting the ‘Master’ back into Dungeon Master… you will live and breathe this game for months, years… your investment and energy will far out way that of your players - even the super keen ones. If you don’t totally love your world and its story options, you won’t stay the course.
As a DM I whole-heartedly agree!! I think we should normalize DMs being a little more "selfish" (for lack of a better word) with our campaigns because we are the ones putting in countless hours of creative prep work into this project while the players just get to show up, have fun, and not think about it again until the next session.
For some reason it's become culturally expected of us to do everything for the players' entertainment by providing them with personalized content at the expense of what we as DMs really want to do. Nah, I'm here to have fun too. I already have a full time job and being a DM isn't it. It's a hobby and it's a lot of work to sustain. Especially when nobody else wants to DM and they just wanna kick back and chill instead.
Long story short: at my table I let them know what I wanna run, what I don't wanna include, and they need to decide for themselves if they wanna be a part of that or not .
Can confirm, it’s hard to run a campaign without player buy-in and impossible without DM buy-in. It could work, but only if the DM likes the player’s ideas
Key session 0 rule for me is to make sure they start with a common reason for adventuring together. If everyone arrives with a separate and rigid character objective, it usually doesn't make sense for them to join together, and it's difficult for the GM to curate a cohesive story that addresses the players desires. Sometimes I give them the reason, like they each pick another player they're bonded to, or they all came from the same region, or there was some larger event that impacted them equally so they have a common motivation
I'm napping things out to dm my first campaign, I'm going to try to address this by running a quick scene where the party meets as children, I build game mechanics for them to play a sport, then there will be a city wide attack they have to escape from. Session one will time jump into the future to start the campaign where they already know each other
My current campaign (a seafaring adventure) is about 10 sessions away from its end. Glad to have gotten this video to add to my collection of resources with the next campaign approaching. Session 0 is always the hardest part for me. I keep having topics come up mid-session that I realize, in hindsight, I should have covered in the beginning. Thanks for the help!
Loving your content! This came right in time for my return to DM'ing 5th edition next week and was reassuring to find your Session 0 list is pretty much the same as mine. Cheers!
I do most of this list in what I call the campaign briefing. It's a short document that describes the setting & premise of the campaign, themes, the length & even the rules and what kind of scheduling I expect to have. The actual session zero is usually fairly short, since only the players who were interested attend, with character creation and discussions on that. (IRL, I'd throw in the beginning of the adventure as well, but we often play online.)
A very solid presentation
Top class vid again man, just finished both stories on spotify as well. Waiting impatiently for the next batch to start! youre crushing dnd stuff right now. much props also from Scotland
I am about to start my new campaign in a post-apocalyptic, high fantasy dnd 5e game, that takes place after The Shadow Horde swept through the lands... could have used these tips for the session 0 I held two weeks ago xD
Great advice as usual, so will keep them in mind for the next one, mate! :D
I've never run a post apocalypse game, but that sounds like so much fun! How long do you envision it running?
@@TalesArcane roughly to level 10-12, so maybe 1,5-2 years. it will take place only 20 years after the end of the war, so the land is still trying to stabilize, so the land will be in chaos, since the war tore open the veil between planes, so rifts appear every so often, letting strange forces and creatures through. they can be walking throught he forest when an ifrit appears. nowhere is safe xD
@@Teraclon very cool! I grew up on D&D, Gamma World and Thundar the Barbarian, so pretty much every game I've ever run has had "post apocalyptic" flavors. I tend to set mine FAR after the "apocalypse" (like 1000 years or so), so that the buildings and bunkers of the past are now dungeons, while the mutations and "genetic experiments" of the past are now the monsters / monstrous humanoids.
My current party did battle with a Wight Monk with a cybernetic eye that fired scorching rays as a reaction. Good times >:-]
Doing a session zero this afternoon. Useful resource. Note that the closest thing you have to a quick visual checklist on this video is the autogenerated chapters. I suggest adding some in as the auto generation left out sensitive themes.
I think this is a tremendously helpful template! I will definitely be using this for more confidence in making sure i cover all the bases during a session 0. 😁
I have my session zero for the new campaign next week. Thanks for the tips!
About to start my new campaign in a week, this video was a good help for a session zero
If you have been playing with your group for a long time, then having a S0 that focuses on the campaign, style, and characters makes sense. However when ppl complain about the garbage that goes on in their games, and are told that a good S0 could have solved a lot of that, it's not the campaign, style or characters that are the issue. It is the behaviors.
A good S0 should be able to bring a bunch of ppl who don't know each other on board to play a game with few behavioural problems. It should be able to on-board a new player into and existing group. A S0 that does not focus on the behavior expectations above all the rest, is likely just a campaign pitch.
Literally have a session zero in 5 hours, thanks
How'd it go?
@@redd_Jack340 Good thanks for asking, didn’t have anytime for a combat encounter though
Thank you for all the ideas!
Glad you're finding the content useful!
Nice video. Personally I find players making characters individually can be problematic. The best parties I had, the characters were created together during session 0, and they "knew each other" before the game start.
I get that! Give me "pre-formed party" over "strangers meet for the first time" any day of the week. I absolutely understand why some players prefer the latter approach, but as a DM I find the first few sessions are so much smoother and more natural if everyone is already acquainted.
I'm starting my campaign in a month and wanted to see how i can introduce them to the campaign, it's a fallout style campaign and uses completely different mechanics, I'll keep this in mind once It begins, thanks a ton mate
Other things for (new) TTRPG players to know/remember:
The GM is a player too.
Respect everybody else's time.
Get on the same page about the type of fun you wanna have together:
Is the ttrpg the foreground focus activity, or the background activity to hanging out??
TTRPGs take much more work /engagement than dominoes / Go-fish / Uno.
DMs should conceive of the campaign/campaigns. The players choose which one they want and then each player should have a chance to “yes, and…” their ideas. Rarely the DM but “no, but…” any truly unworkable concepts
Why would a player who normally plays in-person have to play remotely for a session? Could they not just get in their car and drive to where the game is to play in-person?
The point is to remove barriers to long-term commitment. If players know that every second game won't involve a commute, for example, that can be pretty helpful for getting people locked in longterm. For example, on nights when I play, I have to spend just over two hours commuting to and from my DM's apartment. With work and other life commitments, doing that every week could be a bit draining. Doing it every second week? Much more manageable, for me and for the other players who have to cover distance to and from the game.