POST SESSION ZERO POST

 

My group finally had the session zero I talked about in my previous post, so I figured I should share what I learned from it!

This also serves as a response to the Worldbuilding as a Team Sport, World Anchors and Pointcrawling Character Generation posts from Prismatic Wasteland, Eldritchmouse and Riseupcomus, respectively, since now that I’ve tried the ideas they propose I can accurately share my opinion on them.

First, a bit of context: we started at 17:30 (I like to keep track of the time so I can take into account how long the whole thing took) and I ran them through the Laws and the Safety Tools we would use for this campaign. They pretty much agreed to all of it, although a specific rule caused a bit of debate: DM’s rolls will be open for everyone to see.

I did this simply because the game we’ll use doesn’t really have a DM screen, but it has important implications for the campaign. I was curious as to how it would go, and judging from my player’s response they are too, so we will try this open rolls thing and, if it doesn’t work out for us, keep them hidden. Again, everything is subject to discussion and the approval of every member of the group.

After laying down the bases, we started creating the world: we decided on the size of the hexcrawl map we’d use and went from a 36-hex map like the one in Alex Damaceno’s Beyond the Borderlands zines. The other options were a 5x5 and a 7x7 hex flower (19 and 37 hexes each), but the 36-hex map had a cooler shape, so we went with that.

 

Map of the Wicked Palovalley, the setting of Alex Damaceno's Beyond the Borderlands zines.

Then, we decided if we wanted to start with World Anchors or Yochai Gal’s World Truths. My friends agreed on the Truths, since this way we could start shaping the whole world with a few ideas we liked and then build up from those. World Anchors seemed a bit too specific to start from scratch, and writing a table of 10 anchors seemed a bit more difficult than simply throwing 5 ideas around and developing them from there.

After setting the bases of the campaign we skipped character creation and went straight to building the map. Most of us didn’t really have an idea for the character (we didn’t even knew what backgrounds, ancestries or classes would fit in the world at that point!), and since one of the main Laws was that character creation would be easy and quick, we chose to wait until we had a more tangible world.

For building the world we used Games Omnivorous’ Hexcrawl Toolbox, because physically handling the hexes is super cool and the art is very cute. We built a few regions and filled most of the hexes with landmarks, and here’s one of my main pieces of advice: If you want to build the world with your friends, bring ideas for landmarks.

The hexes from the hexcrawl toolbox had a lot of landmarks, but you can also use things like story dice, oracle cards or simply a good bunch of random tables with ideas for points of interest. A blank map is difficult to fill as a group: your friends might not know if a hex should have a haunted manor, a royal castle or a strange statue, but if you give them a few story dice they will find an image they like (a house, a tree, a pyramid) and put it somewhere on the map, and wonder will do the rest. The thing is to get the engines of imagination up and running, and more often than not that needs a little help.

Once we started, we quickly filled out the map. We followed some of the advice in the Home sanbox zine and built our starting town, a Long River, an Old Road and a base for the Adversary in the region: an expanding empire seeking new land to add to its domain (as my friend put it, we’re europeans, so the Roman Empire is extremely easy to think of. I might try to subvert those tropes later on so it’s not just the Roman Empire 2.0). I must say, even if we built the regions a bit separately, they all came together very fluidly in the end.

The last thing we did was adding a few factions: I liked the idea of physically showing what factions had presence in our region, so I took out some meeples from my Root boardgame (three for each faction) and gave them to players, telling them to pick a faction they liked and place the pieces of that faction on the map. This helped A LOT. We put a few meeples in the forest and think “ok, what if these are a group of rangers that protect the forest, and they have a base in these ancient ruins?” “What if the empire knights are present in this dungeon, and they are searching something inside?” “What if we placed these guys a bit more separated, as if they were isolated clans?”. Of course, we didn’t put every faction on the map, we simply picked 5 of them and added wherever we liked. In the end, 15 Root pieces showed where our five factions had their influence.

 

And here's the finished map! The blue lines are rivers, the red one is the Old Road, and the meeples are the different factions and their territories.

 

This, however, was it for the day. At around 20:30, we had spent three hours building the world and the region, but we only covered three of the steps listed in the Worldbuilding as a Team Sport article. Maybe if our map was smaller (the article uses a 5x5 hex flower) we would’ve done more, but this wasn’t all that bad: we were going to hang out anyways in a few days, so we agreed to take these few days to reflect on what we did and then finish the worldbuilding and creating the PCs.

After having the reflection period, we met again to talk about it in a café. This time, one of the players that was in the previous session couldn’t make it, but the one who wasn’t at the session zero could, so it was nice being able to explain to him the rules and have him contribute to the setting. We also managed to randomly generate two characters, or at least the basic concepts, before having to go.

Here's one of the characters we made, using FATUM cards

This, however, was not the end. We needed yet another session to finish creating the characters, writing their sheets and finishing up the world. I also did a bit of DM work in the meantime and covered a few random tables for when we eventually started playing.

While creating the characters, I asked my players to place their mini on the map at a location where their character found something of interest, and what that was. I was expecting them to come up with a small magic item their characters would start with, as indicated in the Pointcrawling Character Generation post. However, something interesting happened: they didn’t choose magic items at all. One of them chose a pet beetle, another player, whose character was an elf/fae, chose a child; another one chose a volcanic rock (maybe magical, maybe not?) from his character’s home, and the last player chose a (totally normal) sword from one of the factions of the region that her character had found during her travels. It was fun, it gave more characterization to our characters and it tied them fully into the region. If you were to use the pointcrawling character creation idea, I’d say the best way is not limit the choice to a magic item: a treasure, hireling, pet or trinket related to the region and the character works just fine. Some of the options might be a bit unbalanced (one of my players starts with a permanent free hireling), but I already knew this would not be a balanced campaign, so if I can put literal gods as a random (if extremely rare) encounter, they can have some characters be a bit unbalanced, as a treat.

Before ending the session, which again lasted for about three hours, we discussed ideas for the starting settlement. We had agreed that, since most westmarches games are centered around a base town, It’d be nice if our settlement could evolve over the course of our campaign. We created a little farm with a cool feature, in this case a magic oak that moved around during the night and could very occasionally produce golden oats, and three NPCs, three siblings that run the farm where we would start. Players can reach out to these NPCs during play for help, and as our community grows there will be more NPCs to call upon. We also talked about how the characters arrived there, so I could prepare the first session without worrying too much about how to unite the party.

After these two and a half sessions (the middle one wasn’t really a full session, we were having a drink before going to the cinema, so I’m counting it as half a session), we have everything we need to play: World, region, characters and starting settlement. I think that the Worldbuilding as a Team Sport post has great advice and is super fun to use, but don’t expect to be done in one evening, especially if your group is uninspired that day. The World Anchors seem to work best if the DM wants to have certain predetermined things in the world, and the Pointcrawling Character creation is a very cool and effective way to tie characters to the setting, but it works best if you let players decide on what they found where (or give them predefined options yourself) instead of asking them to come up with a magic item on the fly.

Bear in mind that this is only my opinion on the methods I used: your group might adapt better to the World Anchors than to the World Truths, or you might adapt a bit the pointcrawling character generation rules to fit better in your game. Nevertheless, I hope these posts help you prepare your next campaigns, and if you have used them too, let me know how it went!

Next session will be the first game, hopefully, so I can’t wait to see the characters in action and the campaign up and running!

DESIGNING A COLLABORATIVE SESSION ZERO

 

Welcome to the first post of Ramming the Dungeon! 

After Reading other ttrpg blogs for years, I have decided to start my own blog to write about my own opinions and ideas. I don't know how much I'll actually use it, but I'll try to post at least once per month. I hope you enjoy my writing!

 

For many months now, my friends and I have been talking about playing a new fantasy campaign. We had a D&D campaign some years ago, but COVID and the transition from student life to working life ended up bringing it to an indefinite hiatus. For this new campaign, I’m taking what I learned from that older one to try make a better experience for our table.

This new campaign is mainly born from three main goals: less work for the DM (usually me), more flexible schedules and, above all, a more collaborative game.

When I talk about a more collaborative game, I mean a game where everyone can imput their ideas about the rules and the lore freely, and where the table structure is flexible enough to change it from one game to another if needed (not only in the number of players, but also in who wants to be the DM and things like that).

To achieve this, the campaign takes inspiration from the West Marches style of play. We will probably be the same 5 or 6 of us every time, but a West Marches style means that we can do sessions with three people and five people without it being a problem, wich helps a lot with avoiding those dreaded scheduling conflicts every ttrpg group has to face.

The system we will be using doesn’t matter too much. You can take these ideas to use with any game, but if you're curious let's say it’s a mix of Cairn and Mausritter with some extra rules sprinkled here and there (the actual system has even more house rules added). Into the Odd-like systems help add a lot of flexibility, since new characters can be made with little effort and the lack of a leveling system means players can have more than one PC and play with them freely without worrying about level unbalance.

Having covered the bases now, here’s how I’m building the session zero:

 

THE LAWS OF THE CAMPAIGN

First, I explain the "Laws" of the campaign: the rules we will adhere to, beyond the game’s ruleset: West marches style, sandbox world, episodic sessions, three people (one DM and two players) minimum; everyone can DM, we play once or twice a month, we can change PCs whenever we want... These rules are agreed upon by all of us, written down and kept in a “campaign box” where we will keep all the character sheets, system rules, maps, notes, etc. for easy transport.

 

SAFETY TOOLS

After the rules have been explained, we will talk about the safety tools we will use in this campaign. I understand that not every tool works with every group and every system, so the first safety rule is that ttrpgs are a conversation and we are all adults who trust each other and want to have a good time playing together. If at any point someone has any kind of objection or suggestion for the game fiction, they are free to share it and we will adapt the game accordingly.

This rule is probably insufficient, and is so tied to the group mechanic my table has that I don’t expect it to translate to any other group of players, but I think that’s the thing with safety rules: you have to actively look for what works best with your group and your game.

Additionally, we will be using Lines and Veils to know what things we do and don’t want to add to our campaign, and probably an X-card for good measure, just in case we need it. The campaign vibe I’m envisioning is pretty chill, heavily inspired by Adventure Time and The Legend of Zelda, so the setting itself shouldn’t really have any strong trigger warnings. Still, I will discuss this with the group just to make sure we all agree on it.

 

Okay, so we’ve covered the basics, the Laws the campaign will have and the safety tools we’ll be using. Now that’s out of the way, we get to the fun part.

 

Artwork for our last campaign, made by the amazing Criser_mc. That campaign was more "serious" in tone, but I want the new one to match the whimsical vibes of this piece.

BUILDING THE SETTING

A big problem I had with our previous campaign (and I’m sure I’m not the only one) was the excessive worldbuilding. I spent hours creating a complex kingdom with its map, its cities, its governing clans and important NPCs, only to have the story tying to one city and one clan in a tiny bit of the kingdom due to time constraints. Complete regions of my map went completely unexplored, despite having put hours thinking about them. It’s not that I regret it: I don’t; worldbuilding for the sake of worldbuilding is also a great creative exercise, but it can get out of hands easily. I’d prefer this setting to be smaller in scope and have it be meaningful without adding information worth a trilogy of fantasy books. I don’t know if we’ll play more than three sessions of this campaign, so I don’t want to spend hours working for nothing. Besides, I also want players to feel engaged in the world, and I think the coolest way to do it is asking them to build the map with me.

The Prismatic Wasteland blog has a fantastic entry called Worldbuilding as a Team Sport. It shows a way to build the setting together with your players, taking turns to add a location, a religion, a piece of lore to the world. I think it's a really cool concept, and I want to try it and see how different the world I build with my friends is from the world I would build alone. Besides, this campaign is also theirs! They should have as much of a say in what lore to add and the things they want to see as me, the DM. It might be a bit unorthodox, but I'm very curious to see the world that emerges from it. After all, five heads think better than one.

This Prismatic Wasteland article is not the only one I’ll be using: I also want to try Eldritchmouse’s World Anchors, and I’ll likely use Riseupcomus’ Pointcrawling Character Creation too. Worldbuilding as a Team Sport has a step where players point at locations in the map and share something that happened to their character there. I think mixing it with Josh’s idea of giving characters a magic item based on a location they visited before starting the campaign is a perfect addition to it (also, starting with magic items is fun!).

I hope to play this session in a few days, and I hope this post can inspire you for your next session zero! You can let me know in the comments what do you think about this idea and what would you add besides the usual things a session zero entails. I hope to also share here the things I learn with this new campaign!