Why Do a Session Zero? 5 Important Questions To Ask Before You Play D&D

There’s nothing more challenging for a group of players and their DM than committing the opening investment into a first session and immediately discovering a lull in the chemistry. 

Have you ever experienced any of these Session 1 Symptoms?

• All of the characters feel strong individually but everyone doesn’t know how to interact with each other or the world. 

• There’s an awkwardness around new players, new friends entering a social group, or first time DM’s feeling nervous for their first session. 

• You spend so much of the first session building characters and trying to understand the ruleset that adding on the first chapter of the story feels overwhelming. 

• You prepare an entire story for your campaign and after character creation realize what you made doesn’t quite suit these characters or players. 

By utilizing a session “zero”, or an organized play time without starting the story, it allows for both the players and the Dungeon Master to open a more proactive conversation about what they want to create together. 

What is a session zero?

A session zero is a designated time for the players and the Dungeon Master to build player characters, discuss playstyles and aesthetics, clarify any homebrew modifications to the game system and also set boundaries around sensitive topics. 

In contrast to a traditional first session where players build or bring outside pre-built characters to the first chapter of gameplay, a Session Zero doesn’t involve the Dungeon Master providing the world of the story or preparing any thematic elements. Instead, the DM's role in a session zero is to facilitate building characters and asking questions that will help your players decide what kind of game they want to play. 

A Session Zero is also different, if not the opposite, of a”one shot” which is when a campaign story is contained into a small adventure specifically designed for all in one sitting or in one “shot”. Having time to learn about your players and their characters will allow you to provide a story curated to their PCs (Player Characters) and their interests and boundaries. 

Here are some of 5 of the most helpful and important questions you can ask your players in your session zero before you go off and write that campaign masterpiece. 

1. Do any of your characters know each other?

As your players begin to make their first basic choices about who they want to play in this story, it’s helpful to establish any underlying connections between player characters so that they can curate their build details and backstory to each-other. 

Interesting character relationships could include: 

• Characters who are twins or siblings

• Characters who are a mentor and a student, or knight and squire 

• Characters who are parent and child, or grandparent and grandchild

• Characters who are business rivals

• Characters whose origins are unavoidably linked, for example a magic user and the subject of one of their botched spells turned companion until they can find a cure. 

Not only could your players consider amicable relationships, but they could also create initial tension in the group by sharing backstory connections that their players are yet to discover. Characters could come from similar or rival crime syndicates or know the same significant backstory character. 

A player doesn’t need to directly connect their build within the plot to another player without being inspired by their choices and getting inspired by what could match or contrast their character dynamics. Finding contrast within the party is not only strategically advantageous but also provides for the most variety in personalities and backgrounds. Although Dungeons and Dragons parties are infamous for being the most random disconnected group of lone adventurers, creating some connective tissue between the PCs backstories and relationships is helpful to create more active energy in the party. Players get excited about playing a character often because of the way they fit in or stand out in their rag tag team. Making sure your players are each genuinely excited about their PC individually in addition to feeling a part of the team, as this is crucial to providing a fun game for everyone. 

2. What’s your favorite part of the game?

Another important question to bring up during your Session Zero is asking about your player’s personal favorite mechanics or table dynamics in Dungeons and Dragons, or potentially discovering which players are unsure/have never played before.

Here your party and DM can also get clear on whether or not they will be using miniatures to illustrate the PCs in space or digital modeling or entirely theater of the mind. Discussing whether or not you will be using models also determines the size of your needed play area and the materials people need to bring to each game. 

For some people models and maneuvering their character through a modeled space is their favorite part of the game. This might be because turn based combat and analyzing all the pieces in battle strategy is highly appealing. Meanwhile for other players, violent action bores them and they have felt the most engaged and entertained by a complex political espionage campaign involving deceitful NPC interactions and sneaky missions. By asking all of your players together what type of play styles they like, you can begin to watch as an idea of what your players want but haven’t gotten from a campaign starts to emerge. 

Pay attention to any shared excitement between your players as they discuss campaign elements to see what sparks curiosity in the other players. Often the framing of the adventure plays a distinctive part in the tone of the story so by listening to the”type” of story they might want you can get a good idea of what plot hooks will grab them. 

 3. What kind of stories are you drawn to right now?

Different from a conversation about ideal Dungeons and Dragons experiences, you should try and get a read on what story elements or aesthetics your players are drawn to outside of this specific game system. 

Ask your players what they enjoy from video games, tv shows and movies, specifically getting a read on what engages them actively right now. Getting a basic understanding of how these people each spend their time escaping into stories and entertainment will provide you with a better idea of how to meet your players where they’re at with a campaign. Additionally you can get a good read on common or shared interest in media. For example, if multiple of your players enjoy the same show or video game, you can sense certain aesthetics that will work for multiple parts of your party. Finding out your players all like the same media can be a quick cue to a particular area of fantasy or storytelling they’re compelled by. 

In contrast, you can also use this information to steer clear of using an exact thing people are already familiar with if you want to keep your campaign feeling discoverable and unique. 

4. What rules do we want to use? Which ones do we bend? Which ones do we ignore entirely?

At the end of the day, the game is best played to the speed of the players and the story, and very few campaigns utilize exclusively every official rule and mechanic. The world of Dungeons and Dragons has expanded far beyond its own editions and even your most dedicated campaign is likely omitting a mechanic or two in lieu of adding in at least one house rule or “homebrew” element. 

Before we discuss if your players want to add anything original of their own on top of what there is, there are some helpful nitty-gritty rule clarifications to make. 

Leveling Up

There are two different ways of leveling up your players characters within the story. The first is by recording experience gained through slaying creatures. The second is milestone based - basically whenever the DM deems it fitting for the character to progress after significant challenge achievement, they tell the players to level up either during or at the end of a session. 

Using experienced based leveling up will require recording and tracking all of the defeated monsters' experience between the players and the players tracking their accumulative progress to individually level up at various total amounts. The table for experience based leveling up is below including the change in proficiency bonus modifier. Please reference any class descriptions when leveling up to reference class specific details. 

Experience Earned	Level	Proficiency Bonus
0	1	+2
300	2	+2
900	3	+2
2,700	4	+2
6,500	5	+3
14,000	6	+3
23,000	7	+3
34,000	8	+3
48,000	9	+4
64,000	10	+4
85,000	11	+4
100,000	12	+4
120,000	13	+5
140,000	14	+5
165,000	15	+5
195,000	16	+5
225,000	17	+6
265,000	18	+6
305,000	19	+6
355,000	20	+6
As you can see, utilizing experience locks your players into a specific point on a standardly progressing advancement whereas milestones allows for achievements based off of plot significant conclusions than can fit into any timeline the DM wants.

Both are valid ways to play, though be aware that XP based leveling up essentially requires frequent combat to be effective, while milestone leveling up can be utilized in a variety of playstyles but may make the players feel their progression is more in the DM’s hands than their own.

Ammo, Spell Components, and Sustenance

Another helpful rule clarification you should make before you play is whether or not the DM will be requiring an awareness of players tracking their ammunition and spell components, as well as food and water.

By agreeing to include these rules, the Dungeon Master can create narrative challenges for players who may need to carefully conserve or hunt for key items just so they can cast spells, fire their weapons, or not suffer exhaustion. Keeping track of ammunition increases the care taken in taking shots on targets where arrow retrieval isn’t possible or the likelihood of breaking their armour class is daunting with cover. Requiring spell components will push your magic users to similarly be more sparing with their attacks but also will create more world interactions as your spell casters must create a daily grocery list of items needed to use their helpful arcane abilities. Using spell components will affect the novelty of magic use within the world, making arcane abilities less fluent and more tied to the economy and access to material resources. Additionally, nonphysical components must also be completed, so if a character is unable to speak the necessary vocation or use their hands, they are unable to complete the spell. This can create excellent tension in scenarios where magic is used as an impossible fix to get out of a hostage situation, where a spellcaster would be bound and gagged, unable to access their components. 

For some players however the task of tracking components and not being able to use their spells or weapons freely is just too daunting or a bit of a buzzkill. Both options are great ways to play, but should definitely be discussed beforehand.

Homebrew

While discussing some of the mechanical details of what Dungeons and Dragons includes in its roleplay system, ask your players if there are any mechanics or systems that they want to see included into the world. 

You should feel absolutely free to create whatever focused hybrid of the rules that gets your players most invested. So if they’re curious about expanding outside their edition’s limitations, do it! Some players might have a unique idea for a character skill or hobby they want to include, others might express interest in wanting to add a new technology to the world such as spacecraft or livestock.

WorldSmith.io is one of the strongest homebrew tools online, and is a super easy way to convert player ideas for spells, feats, magic items, characters, etc into balanced playable stat blocks. Particularly if you are new to D&D I highly recommend using WorldSmith.io to make your homebrew, just to make sure it stays fair and players who are not using homebrew do not feel like they are playing at a disadvantage.

5. What’s off limits?

The final and most important part of a Session Zero is checking in with each of your players to discuss what are the boundaries around sensitive topics, jokes, and language that they are not comfortable with at the table. 

Some often off limits topics and depictions include: 

• sexual themes/actions

• violence towards minors

• violence towards animals

• enslavement

• abuse 

• bathroom activities

• foul language

The focus of this boundary conversation is not to understand why anyone might have any of the expressed boundaries, but merely to pay attention and hear what is off limits. This is especially important as the Dungeon Master as your players are trusting you with their immersive experience. As some players may not feel comfortable expressing these boundaries publicly with new players, you may also want to hand out paper and have players write their boundaries down so they can then be shared publicly without tying boundaries to specific players at the table.

It’s also helpful to discuss how dark the description of combat and violence is comfortable with your table before you get into your first initiative combat and get too carried away with the details. 

Additionally some people may want to set boundaries on whether or not they want to have any fictional flirting or romantic possibility with PCs and NPCs or if they have boundaries on participating in or being subject to another player depicting any relational dynamics or cruelty and aggression between PCs. Any and all boundaries that could be discussed will help inform a sense of trust and vulnerability in your group of players that allows for relaxing play. 

Time for Session 1!

Not only will a Session Zero help the campaign prep process, but it will break a lot of the ice on the party getting excited to play the game together and get them thinking and exploring character and story ideas long before you play. This way, when you finally get all your players in the same room to play, you can give them the custom fantasy experience they’re dreaming of.