Worldbuilding Journal 2 - Session Zeroes as an Experienced GM

Next, I want to talk to the expert game masters, the experienced runners of the game, the ones who have spent years leading their friends through hell and high water in search of gold and glory. I salute you all, you beautiful people.  Being the forever GM is no easy task, requiring commitment, sacrifice, tenacity, and flexibility.  Lots and lots of flexibility.

If this is you, and you are building a homebrew world or campaign but are not sure if you are ready for your players to start messing around in that world, I have a very simple answer.

You are ready. 

Now I know it might not be enough for some random guy on the internet to tell you that, so let's go through a checklist to confirm my suspicions. 

• Do you have a town or small city that feels fairly built out? Does it have a name, a few shops, and a tavern? Check! 
• Do you have a few simple adventures in mind that are either specific to that town or can be dropped into it? Check! 
• Do you have a rough outline of your world at large? Check!

That's it, that's the checklist. If you have those three things, you have enough to get your players started, with content to fill the first 3-4 sessions.  As an experienced GM you know that unless you have been blessed with the gift of omniscience, you are unlikely to predict the trajectory of your party beyond a session or two, so while having a blurry picture of your whole world is important, a very clear understanding of your starting town is infinitely more valuable.  Give them a push out the door, let them discover a trajectory, and then focus your effort on preparing for the next session or two based on their decisions.

With that in mind, there are a few things that any game master can do to set their group up for success before beginning a homebrew campaign, or even a published one for that matter.  Many of these tools get wrapped into one session, called a "session zero", and odds are if you have been running the game for a long time you are already implementing some or all of these concepts.  But, in case you haven't been, or you are just curious what my session zeroes look like, here is a quick snapshot of the process I use.

My Session Zero

First, create an "elevator pitch" for the campaign.  I write this out as a narrative introduction to the world, hitting on a few topics that will help inform my players' decisions when making their character, or, for those who always have a collection of characters on standby, which character they feel will be the best or most compelling to drop into the world you built. I will talk about details of the world that essentially any living being on the planet should know, such as the name of the continent or country they are in, unavoidable political or cultural events that happened recently (think plagues, wars, or massive natural disasters), who the current king/empress/president/ruler is, things like that.  Once I have this all written out, I will send it to each player, and give them some time to brainstorm a character or two. 

As players have characters ready, I will have them send me every scrap of information they have developed about said character.  This will vary from player to player, anywhere from "I'm playing a Gnome Bard with green skin named Flermit the Krog" to "Hey, my email will only let me attach 20mb so I just sent you a Dropbox link", and anywhere in-between. I soak up all that information and put it in a folder somewhere that I can reference as we go. As the world expands along our journey, I will find spaces where I can drop the player's backstory characters and plot points into the campaign, places where they can either naturally stumble upon them or intentionally seek them out. 

Then, with characters locked in, I will develop a short one-on-one adventure based on the character's background.  These super casual one-shots should take less than an hour to finish.  They are designed to help get your player comfortable as their character, develop a couple of key NPCs, foreshadow plotlines, practice using character sheets, and give you insight into the character and the player's style.  They can be set up like a video game tutorial for new players to get a handle on the game mechanics and learn where to find common information on their character sheet, or for experienced players they can be deep dives into a crucial NPC or defining moment from the character's past. Tailor this session to your individual player's needs, just make sure it is casual and fun.  You want it to get the player excited to start the campaign, not overwhelm them or make them dread playing.

Lastly, I love to write so I take lots of notes, then write their session zero into a narrative recap and send it to the player.  That way they have a copy of what happened, the spelling of key names, and a few things to fall back on if they get stuck later. Based on the session and the character, I will also throw in a few details about the world that someone from their background would know, things that nobody else in their party would know.  Turns out secret secrets are actually super fun.

And that's my session zero!  Your version can be simpler or more in-depth, but the bottom line should always be setting up your players and yourself for success.  You want to give them just enough information about the world to get them hooked and learn just enough about their character that you can fit them into that world.  From there you are off to the races!  Now you are ready to have your players explore your world, murder its NPCs, burn its story arcs, and pillage its plot points until it is no longer your world, but their world too.  You've got this.