Build stronger D&D parties with The Session Zero System

One of the true joys of tabletop RPGs is creating a character, someone that you can inhabit along with your friends at the table. But rarely do players and game masters spend enough time bonding these characters together before leaving the tavern for their first adventure. Professional game master and designer Gabe Hicks and her team Mythical Grove Productions want to change that. The team’s next project is a game called The Session Zero Systema tarot-based pre-game tool that could soon join the ranks of The Silent Year and World ending game as role-playing essentials.

A “session zero” traditionally refers to the time a prospective roleplaying group spends together before actually playing the first session of a one-shot or campaign. It is a space to talk about safety at the table and ways to ensure everyone is comfortable and engaged with the material and situations presented. But it’s also time to make the party itself something more than an assortment of different classes, backgrounds, deadly weapons and spells. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime community-building opportunity, but often one that new dungeon masters overlook.

Image: Mythic Grove Productions

“I like session zeros in the sense that I get an idea of ​​what everyone wants to play — the kind of game everyone wants to experience,” Hicks said in a recent interview with Polygon. “Something that was really important to me is that the players talk a little bit about each other’s characters so we can build from them. I’ve found that in session zero, if you don’t talk about your characters — like goals and aspirations and stuff like that — you end up not emphasizing each other’s moments.”

Hicks exemplified a character who has an insatiable lust for forbidden, cursed objects. When something like this comes up in-game, knowing that a member of the party has a special, personal connection signals players to leave that item alone and directs the player with the special connection to it instead.

“I don’t need to know why they want the prohibited item,” Hicks said. “I don’t need to know that maybe there’s something in them that desires them, but [simply] The idea that forbidden items are important to this character helps me as a player to be more receptive and committed to giving them that moment to shine.”

Image: Mythic Grove Productions

To use The Session Zero System

GMs play cards for each player at the table from three different decks – Bond, Catalyst and Legacy. Each card represents a prompt that players can consider and then discuss openly around the table, using their already created characters as the basis for their response. The Bond Deck defines how characters, non-player characters, and the world around them are connected. Catalyst identifies events in this world’s history that bring characters into conflict with their surroundings, or perhaps even with each other. Legacy is how those events played out and created the character he is today.

“It’s not about knowing the rules of the game best,” Hicks said. “It’s not about knowing the world best. It’s about what you want to contribute to building the world in this session that we’re going to play together.”

Often these types of internal waypoints and motivations are clearly communicated to GMs in advance, but Hicks said spreading this knowledge among all members of the party helps ease the burden on the GM alone. It also encourages the building of complex webs of relationships between the various members of the party – a surefire way to help newcomers compete on an equal footing with more experienced players.

“The idea is if someone has a character in mind, they can answer those questions as that character,” Hicks said. “If someone doesn’t know who they want to be, at this point they have a moment to think about it.”

Hiccup wants more than anything The Session Zero System to be a tool that helps more players become GMs and DMs later and not feel so intimidated when they first jump in. The aim is not to replace the habit of session zero games, but to improve them with more structured and user-friendly tools.

“There are dozens and dozens of incredibly advanced storytellers who might never need or want anything like that,” Hicks said. “I want those people to be able to enjoy it, but I also really want that person to not necessarily know how to get started with it — who doesn’t know how to necessarily pull people in the same way.” […] — I want that person who is nervous [to] Make them comfortable doing it. I want this to be one of those tools for them.”

The crowdfunding campaign for The Session Zero System is currently live on Kickstarter and will run until November 10th. Sets of 60 cards and an interpretive booklet start at $45, with delivery scheduled for November 2023. A digital version starts at just $10 and is expected a little sooner – by August 2023.