This Feature is part of the ongoing True Campaign Managery Course. You don’t have to take the course in order, but you probably should. Especially if you’re not sure what the hell True Campaign Managery even is. If you’ve not been following the Course, use The True Campaign Managery Course Index to catch up. This lesson will still be here when you’re done.

To Session Zero or Not to Session Zero: This Isn’t A Question

Blah blah blah lesson time blah blah blah dumbasses… intro over. Let’s do it to it.

You can’t do a thing about starting tabletop roleplaying campaigns in the 20s — yes, we’re in the 20s now — without addressing the Session Zero elephant in the room. Back in the aughts, no one had even heard the term. And in the Teens, it was so obscure that you couldn’t discuss it without defining it. But now, times have changed. Now, the term Session Zero is ubiquitous enough that every Internet Game Master’s heard it and everyone assumes it’s a real, actual game term with a hard-and-fast definition instead of a nonsense phrase we long-time bloggers invented and popularized ourselves.

As such, while everyone agrees there is definitely a hard-and-fast definition for Session Zero and everyone absolutely knows what does and what doesn’t count as Session Zero, no two gamers agree on those definitions.

Yeah. It’s one of those.

And yes, some of this is my fault. And yes, once upon a time, I helped convince everyone everywhere that Session Zero was a thing you just always did. But I’m older now. And wiser. And angrier. And I’ve got a whole new take on the idea. Especially given some of the crap some Internet dipshits are trying to cram into Session Zero these days.

That said… my opinion hasn’t changed as much as it seems. The Session Zero advice I gave seven years ago isn’t bad advice. It’s perfectly fine advice. And Mere Campaign Supervisors should definitely follow it. But you’re not an itty, bitty Mere Campaign Supervisor anymore, are you? And I’m not writing this for babbies, am I? No.

So let’s have an adult conversation about Session Zero.

Let’s Fight About What Session Zero Really Is

As with every gaming term ever, trying to define Session Zero precisely is asking for trouble. Kind of like how slathering yourself in barbecue sauce and jumping into a piranha tank is asking for trouble. It’s a term that’s built up a lot of baggage over the years and, depending on which dipshit blogger you learned the term from, your baggage may not match anyone else’s. So you’ve probably had more than a few fights about the true and correct and real definition in your time. Which is a stupid, useless way to waste your time and absolutely not something you’ll be doing in my comment section, right?

The Simple Answer

Cutting through the crap and ignoring all the baggage, a Session Zero is just a meeting you have with your players before your first actual play session. You gather the same way you would for a game — in a Zoom window or around a table or whatever — but, instead of playing the game, you don’t. You talk. You work shit out so that, hopefully, the next time you get together, you can actually play the frigging game.

So, a Session Zero is a session that comes before the first actual play session. It’s the zeroth session. Session. Zero. Simple.

The Loaded Answer

How exactly does one pile enough crap on that simple idea to generate screaming Internet fights about it? It’s easy. First, define the One True Purpose of Session Zero. Then, come up with a list of Things That Are the Only Things that Can Be Done in Session Zero. And finally, for bonus points, overlap that list with a list of Things Every Game Master Must Do For Every Campaign Ever No Matter What. Once you do that, you can scream at anyone who uses a Session Zero for anything but the One True Purpose or who does something at Session Zero that isn’t on the list of Things That Are the Only Things that Can Be Done in Session Zero. And the gods help someone who doesn’t bother hosting a Session Zero because they don’t agree that all the Things Every Game Master Must Do For Every Campaign Ever No Matter What are actually worth doing.

If you look into this Session Zero shit online, you’ll find lots of dipshits claiming that Session Zero is a specific thing that must be done for a specific reason. Or specific reasons. These might include Setting Expectations, Building a Campaign by Committee, Gathering Information about the Game the Players Want to Play, Establishing Bullshit Personal Boundaries with A Crap Lines and Veils Survey, and Secretly Assigning Each Player a Style Preference to Exploit in Adventure Building.

And some will claim that Session Zero is a good place for character generation.

Session Zero is Not for Character Generation

And now I’m going to get myself in trouble.

I think anyone — even past me — who tires to establish any concrete Session Zero definition is a dumbass. Saying, “This is what a Session Zero is; anything else doesn’t technically count,” is a dumbass thing to do. Session Zero is just a game session that comes before the first actual play session. That’s it.

Except Session Zero is never — not frigging ever — for making characters. Any meeting or session at which characters get made is a Session CG.

But I’m allowed to do this. Why? Because I’m not doing it to establish the One True Way to host a Session Zero and I’m not doing it so I scream at people online. I can scream at people online anyway. I’m doing it to separate the two discussions. I want to teach you two different things. First, why you might want to meet with your players before you start playing. And second, how to best create characters.

I’m breaking up the topics. But I’m also saying that if you do need to meet with your players before you start playing — as I’ll discuss below — you don’t want to make characters then and there. In point of fact, for reasons that’ll be obvious by the end — I hope, anyway — if you’re in a position to create characters already, you don’t need a Session Zero. And if you’re hosting a Session Zero, you’re not ready to make characters.

You can do whatever you want whenever you want. And you can call any meeting you have before your first play Session Zero. But True Campaign Managers who need Session Zeroes don’t use them to make characters and groups that are ready to make characters don’t need Session Zeroes and combining the two is a bad idea.

Do You Really Even Need to Session Zero?

With all that definitional, argumental shit out of the way — and in a flaming dumpster where it belongs — let me address the actual question at the heart of today’s lesson: Do True Campaign Managers host Session Zeroes? And the answer is: they don’t unless they need to.

True Campaign Managers host a Session Zero when they need to; they don’t when they don’t.

That’s today’s lesson in one uselessly self-evident tautology. What a fucking revelation, right?

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All right, calm your tits, everyone. There’s a really important implied point here. And that is that campaigns that benefit from a Session Zero are the exception, not the rule, and that hosting an unnecessary Session Zero is a waste. And that’s pretty much the opposite of what most Game Mastering advice suggests. Most Game Masters consider Session Zero the default. They think every good campaign starts with Session Zero. Hell, I said that myself once upon a time. But I was talking to Mere Campaign Supervisors and Mere Game Executors back then. And I, myself, wasn’t really a True Campaign Manager.

It’s also worth noting that most of the reasons that most online dipshits — past Angry included — host a Session Zero aren’t actually good enough reasons to host a Session Zero. Setting expectations? Getting buy-in? Establishing a social contract? Those ain’t good enough reasons to host a Session Zero. Gathering information about what the players want or how they prefer to play? Nope. Not good enough. Establishing personal boundaries and setting lines your game’s not allowed to cross? Absolutely definitely not a good enough reason to host a session zero and it’ll actually do damage to your game.

Truth be told, there are just three good reasons to host a Session Zero. I’m gonna take you through them. If you ain’t doing it for one of these three reasons, your Session Zero is a waste of time and energy. And it might make your game worse.

Meeting Strangers

If you’ve got players in your new campaign who have never played at your table before or who’ve never played in the same party together, you absolutely must host a Session Zero. True Campaign Managers never launch campaigns for players they’ve never met. True Campaign Managers never ask players who’ve never met to team up. And True Campaign Managers know you’ve never met a player or a Game Master until you’ve played over them, under them, or on their team.

Now, maybe you’ve got a mix of people. Maybe some people have played together and maybe others haven’t. Maybe you’ve got two pairs of people who’ve played together at different tables but have never played together together. Maybe you’ve got people who’ve played in the same game you played in, but you’ve never presided over them as a Game Master. Host a Session Zero.

I can run through a bunch of permutations and exceptions — if you’re adding just one new player to an existing group, for example, even if they’re a stranger you might skip Session Zero — but I’m hoping most of you will grok the spirit of my advice instead of fixating on the precise letters. Which I know is a stupid thing to hope for. Some dumbass is absolutely going to come up with some weird-ass edge case in the comments of three people who’ve played a cooperative, legacy-style board game, a Game Master who has run solo games for two of them, and one group game that included the third, and one person completely new to the group except they’re someone’s spouse or some shit like that. And I’m going to treat them like the dumbass they are.

If the players haven’t worked as a team in a gaming environment before, they need a little social mixer session before you fling them into a campaign. And if you’ve not been in a position of authority over your players, you need to see if you can manage at least a simple meeting before you try to run an entire campaign for them.

And obviously, these rules only count for launching a campaign. If you’re running a one-shot adventure over a couple of sessions or a convention game or some shit like that, don’t sweat it.

The point here’s to, at the very least, get the players used to interacting with each other, get them used to listening to you, and get yourself used to herding this particular clowder of kittens. And it doesn’t actually matter what you do at Session Zero. It’s really more of a meet-and-greet than anything else. A guided but casual conversation is the way to go.

Settling Gaming Club Issues

There are times when you’ve got to work some shit out before you can launch a campaign. And mostly, that’ll come down to the Clubhouse Rules. Maybe it’s about figuring out when and how often you can play and who’s hosting the game where and who’s responsible for snacks. Or maybe it’s about establishing your lateness and attendance policies.

It’s totally possible for some groups — especially groups of experienced and responsible adult gamers and especially established groups — to work this shit out through other channels. Like, say, a simple group text chat. But if that’s proving difficult or if you have concerns about your players’ reliability and adultitude, you’ve got a good reason to convene a Session Zero. And if you have new — or even new-ish — players, it’s also best to just call a Session Zero to order.

Further, if you’ve tried to establish these sorts of Clubhouse Rules by other channels and have run into a conflict or difficulty — however small — it’s worth ironing it out with a full-on Session Zero. In fact, lots of Clubhouse Rules Session Zeroes start with conflicts or objections. Say, for instance, you distribute a set of Clubhouse Rules by document, and one or more of your players raise objections. Or even just raise questions. It’s time to move the discussion to Session Zero instead of doing a bunch of private — or group — back-and-forth messages.

Remember, conflict resolution — even for tiny conflicts — demands dialogue. There’s got to be an actual back-and-forth. The same’s true when you’re convincing people to agree to rules they’re iffy on. When a True Campaign Manager tries to establish Clubhouse Rules and gets anything but unanimous consent, they call a Session Zero. You hould too.

Group First Vision-Crafting

Remember when I started all this bullshit by establishing the difference between Game First and Group First Campaigns? And that the difference is about who develops the initial Campaign Vision? If you don’t, you either skipped lessons despite my warnings or you have a sucky memory. Either way, you’re a bad Game Master and you should feel bad.

Anyway…

It should probably go without saying — except I’m saying it because I’ve learned that nothing goes without saying on the Internet — it should go without saying that, if you’re doing a Group First Campaign, you need Session Zero to develop your Campaign Vision. It’s that simple. I don’t even know what else to say here.

So You Need a Session Zero?

If you’ve got a group of strangers who’ve never tried and failed at a team game together or if you need a meet-and-greet to establish your dominance over a group you’ve never had power over before — and don’t get your panties in a rustle; it was a joke — or if you need to set your Clubhouse Rules and get your players to agree that it’s your way or the highway — that was a joke too — or if you’re filthy, disgusting Communist who wants to build a game by committee — that wasn’t a joke; you’re wrong and Communism sucks — you’re gonna need to host a Session Zero.

And if you can’t check one or more of those boxes, you don’t need a Session Zero so don’t waste your time on one.

Let’s say you do, though? You do need Session Zero. Now what?

You should host your Session Zero the same way you plan to host your games. If you’re running a real, big-boy game in the big, scary real world of actual people, host your Session Zero there. If you’re doing voice-and-video chat, have a Session Zero Zoom Call. If you’re running a text-based or play-by-post game, find another hobby because you’re doing this one the shitty, stupid way and I can’t help you. Well, I can, but I won’t.

However, keep in mind three things. First, if you’re hosting an in-person Session Zero that includes people you’ve never met in real life, do it at some neutral, public space. Since a meet-and-greet can happen anywhere, try a restaurant, a bar, a coffee shop, a game shop, a cafe, a library, or a public park. Don’t invite humans you’ve never met into your living space. Or anyone else’s. That’s just basic safety.

Second, Session Zeroes suck. Everyone would rather be gaming than talking about gaming. So, if you need a Session Zero, keep it short. You probably only need one focused hour to resolve clubhouse issues. Two hours is good for a meet-and-greet. If you’re developing a Campaign Vision, you may need a full game-session-length meeting, though.

The trick is to know exactly why you’re wasting time with a damned Session Zero instead of gaming and commit only as much time as you absolutely need to it. If you’ve got multiple goals — say, you need to do a mixer and then set a gaming schedule — plan your time accordingly. And if you’re doing all three… well, you’re doing things the stupid way. If you’re gaming with a bunch of strangers and haven’t agreed to basic Clubhouse Rules, you’re better off running a one-shot game before launching an entire campaign.

But that’s a story for another time. A time that has already passed; I’ve given that speech before.

Third, if you don’t need a full game-session’s-worth of time for your Session Zero, absolutely don’t tack on character generation or start playing in the same session. When Session Zero is done, send everyone home. Start gaming — or making characters — another day.

In my next lesson, I’m going to do something un-fucking-precedented in the online Game Mastering advice space: I’m going to teach you how to actually host a meeting. But before that, I’d like to have a casual chat in my office about just why I think it’s a mistake to host a Session Zero for certain reasons that I used to think were a good idea. And also why setting personal boundaries before the game is such a bad idea.

So come by my office in a few days for that. It’ll be a blast. Or a bloodbath.