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critter3of4
2015-06-17, 02:35 PM
TL;DR I made notes for my Session 0 in the spoiler below and looking for some feedback. Also, how do you handle your session 0?

Below are my current "Session 0" notes for my upcoming campaign using B10 Night's Dark Terror which I'm converting from Basic D&D to 5e. The actual start date and players have not been determined yet, but I have a large group of potential players through AL and a FLGS. I have made mention that I'd like to DM this module and people have responded positively to the idea. I expect the players will be familiar with 5e but not Mystara.

Too be honest, trying to add another campaign at this point would probably be too much for the group. So, for now, I wait for a less busy time.

Session 0 will probably take three hours. I have broken it down into three parts:

1) The World of Mystara
2) Character Creation
3) House Rules

The notes are interspersed with questions that I plan to ask the players. I'd be interested in any responses you may have. I'll probably use them as suggestions to help the players come to a solution, if needed. A few of the questions are issues that I need to resolve before we actually play (such as handling encumbrance).

Even if you can't decipher my notes, I'd like to hear how you handle Session 0.


B10 SESSION 0

1) The World of Mystara

A) Karameikos and Beyond

I. Use descriptions for territories from X1 Isle of dread
*Find/ print any map of Karameikos and surrounding areas.
*These paragraph sized descriptions provide an "at a glance" synopsis.

II. Use "Newbies guide to Mystara" from Pandius.com
*a full page description of each area to provide if players are interested

B) Night's Dark Terror Map (North Eastern Karameikos)

*Present the Players Map from B10
*Show where this region fits on the larger scale map
*Introduce calender, phases of moon, & weather
---Two days consecutive rain. Most outdoor combat terrain is difficult.
---Two days consecutive downpour. All travel cut in half.
---DMG page 110 for weather conditions and combat
---Werewolves and moons

C) Timeline

I. 1000 BC- approx 1000 AC
*The Traladarans from their "golden age" to the present.
*Greater detail for the past 100 years (Thyation conquest)
*This campaign may start before the typical date (1000 AC)

D) Levels

* IME, The campaign spans from 3rd - 5th (possibly 6th) level
* XP will be group xp only, individual bonuses are group bonuses.
* Xp will be given in numbers easily divisible by 6. (See 2A)


2) Character Creation

A) 4 players, 6 characters

*Each of the four players will create a 3rd level character
*A 1st level fighter will be provided by me.
---This character will take the Champion archetype
*A 1st level character will be created by the group
*Players can give henchmen xp as they see fit to do.

B) Playable Races available (local origin, if desired)

I. Races
*Human (Thyation and Traladaran)
*Elf (Callari = Wood Elf) (Vyalia = High Elf) (No Fey Realm in Mystara)
*Dwarf (Mountain only, players choose) (clan at Highforge)
*Halfling (any subrace, Five Shires)
*Gnome (Rock only, Highforge)
*Half-Elf (Specularum, Vyalia or Callari)

C) Tools and Background

I. How do we make these usable at the table?
*2e professions = general knowledge and skills?
*general knowledge and skills improvised in gameplay
* Define each player's Tools and Backgrounds
* Should be defined with Karameikos/B10 setting in mind.

D) Starting cash / Equipment / Encumbrance

I. Max in PHB by class + 100 gp

II. Equipment
* Everything in the PHB is available
* Availability of equipment may be limited "in play" according to circumstances.

III. Encumbrance
*I'd like to use a system of encumbrance that'll hold the players accountable
* I don't want the players too bogged down by detail
*Slot system for encumbrance?

E) Group Background

I. Starting at 3rd level
* What bonds the group together? Common Race or Backgrounds?
* Define the previous adventure that the group has experienced together
* Why does the group travel to Kelven?
* Why does the group take Stephan's offer (adventure hook for B10) ?

3) House Rules

A) Group Initiative

I. Contested roll based on a group's initiative
* Group Initiative Bonus (average score of the group, rounded down)
* On the group's first turn, players / DM decides the order.
* This will define the specific initiative order thereafter.
---Similar to batting order in baseball.
---Hold action will permanently drop creature down in the order.
---Can not hold action until the middle of other group's turn
--- Readied Action any time.
* Simultaneous / cooperative actions?
* Simplifies tracking initiative and encourages team work.

II. Concentration Spells
*A caster may try to concentrate two spells
*This causes one level of exhaustion
*This takes effect after one concentration spell ends
*A player must make a con save vs. DC10 + both spell levels after the 1st round.
*On a failed save, caster loses both spells.
*PC will auto-fail after 10 rounds (9 saves), i.e. one minute.

III. Miscellaneous Rules
* Medicine available to fighters
* A PC who goes to zero HPs or below increases exhaustion by 1.


B) Enemy Morale

*Using 2d6 morale system from basic D&D.

C) Character Death

*Create a new 3rd level character

D) Healing Variant (players option)

I.This is an optional rule to add difficulty only if players want it
*The group can opt out of this healing variant completely
*Or they can add extra difficulty by requiring proficiency with the Med kit
*What skill is appropriate for making Med Kits?

I like the short rest/long rest mechanic because it keeps the game moving. I don't like the idea that a PC can potentially fully heal by simply "eating, drinking, reading, and tending wounds" for one hour.

So i've decided to add a resource cost to healing and created a new tool called a Med Kit. The pc's need to use a Med kit per HD of healing for short rest. During long rest, one "use" of a Med kits heals one max HD.

Med kits cost 50gp with 10 "uses", making it 5gp per "use."The Med kit is a triple antibiotic with gelatinous cube added to really kill the germs. Acolytes of the local temples pay good money for gelatinous cube in order to create these kits.

Healing without a Med kit is 1hp plus con bonus per long rest. No short rest healing without a Med kit.

TurboGhast
2015-06-17, 05:06 PM
I normally have session 0 just be character creation, and coming up with backstories.

Karl Aegis
2015-06-17, 06:12 PM
Before game

1. Brief in character introductions (age, gender, role/job, not very detailed).

2. Make a single Fate roll. If you get less than 3 Kiai, raise your pool to 3 Kiai. This is your starting pool.

3. The GM can request for PCs to add a third fate, with a relationship towards another PC.

Zero Act (first Act)

1. Have a scene for each character

2. After the scene, hand them the Destiny (do not modify if Zero Act events seem incongruent)

Zero Act Intermission

1. Have a preview that will raise player's interest and engagement

2. If PCs have no fates regarding other PCs, create them now.

3. Cannot sublimate or change Fates at this time.

4. Have everyone spend all Aiki on Fate rolls.

5. Discuss rules

6. Take a break.

Always nice to have a cheat sheet for these kinds of things.

critter3of4
2015-06-18, 02:17 PM
Before game

1. Brief in character introductions (age, gender, role/job, not very detailed).

2. Make a single Fate roll. If you get less than 3 Kiai, raise your pool to 3 Kiai. This is your starting pool.

3. The GM can request for PCs to add a third fate, with a relationship towards another PC.

Zero Act (first Act)

1. Have a scene for each character

2. After the scene, hand them the Destiny (do not modify if Zero Act events seem incongruent)

Zero Act Intermission

1. Have a preview that will raise player's interest and engagement

2. If PCs have no fates regarding other PCs, create them now.

3. Cannot sublimate or change Fates at this time.

4. Have everyone spend all Aiki on Fate rolls.

5. Discuss rules

6. Take a break.

Always nice to have a cheat sheet for these kinds of things.

What system is that from?

Sorry, I'm unfamiliar with RPG games outside of D&D with the exceptions of the Star Frontiers and Twighlight: 2000 campaigns I played in the 80's / 90's.

Karl Aegis
2015-06-18, 04:59 PM
What system is that from?

Sorry, I'm unfamiliar with RPG games outside of D&D with the exceptions of the Star Frontiers and Twighlight: 2000 campaigns I played in the 80's / 90's.

Tenra Bansho Zero. It was popular during the Turn of the Century era, but not in the USA.

dream
2015-06-18, 05:04 PM
If my group consists of people I know, or strangers, I begin with The Same Page Tool (https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/the-same-page-tool/).

It helps establish everyone's expectation about what you're playing and how.

Jay R
2015-06-18, 09:22 PM
My session 0 is roughly two weeks of emails, which allows players lots of interaction with me, and the ability to coordinate with or hide information from other players.

It opens with a several page description of the campaign, so they can get started. Then their questions tell me what other information is needed.

The current game started with the following (very long):

Introduction to D&D Campaign

I am planning to run a D&D campaign fairly soon.

The current plan is to use the 2E rules, but I could be talked out of that. I originally wrote some of it with a Fantasy Hero rules in mind. I’m prepared to switch to original D&D, AD&D 1E, AD&D 2E, or Fantasy Hero if that’s what the players want. (I don’t know any later version well enough to run a game.)

Note: I have a basic idea for PCs, but I urge people to ask for exceptions. Some exceptions I won’t grant because they don’t fit the world, others because they would make a character too powerful. But I am quite comfortable with the idea that every character is an exception to the basic idea.

You will begin as first level characters with very little knowledge of the outside world. Your character is just barely adult – 14 years old. You all know each other well, having grown up in the same tiny village. Everyone in this village grows their own food, and it’s rare to see anybody from outside the village, or anything not made in the village. There is a smith, a village priest, but very few other specialists.

You are friends, even if you choose to have very different outlooks, because almost everybody else in the village, and absolutely everyone else anywhere near your age, are dull villagers, with little imagination.

By contrast, you and your friends sometimes stare down the road, or into the forest, wondering what the world is like.

The world is basically early medieval. You all speak a single language for which you (reasonably) have no name. If you learn another language, you’ll know more about what that means.

It’s a really small village. There are fewer than 100 people living there, which is smaller than it used to be. There are chickens, goats, sheep, a couple of oxen, but no horses or cows.

The village has a single road going out of town to the north and south, and you’ve never been on it. The only travel on it occurs when a few wagons go off to take food to market – and even that hasn’t happened in the last few seasons. Very rarely, a traveler may come through, and spend the night with the priest. You have all greedily listened to any stories these travelers tell. Your parents say this isn’t good for you – what’s here in the village is good enough for you, and all travelers are always liars, anyway.

A stream runs through the village. (This is primarily so you can learn fishing if you desire.) There are also a few wells.

The village is surrounded by a haunted forest nearby. You have occasionally gone a few hundred feet into it on a dare, but no further, and never at night. I will modify this (slightly) for any character who wishes to start as a Druid or Ranger. Nobody gets to know the modification unless they choose one of those classes.

Three times in your lifetime the village has been raided at night from the forest. You were children, and were kept safe in a cellar. Some villagers have died, but by the time you were let out, whatever the attackers were had fled or been buried.

There is very little overlap between the D&D adventurer class “Cleric” and the average priest. Most priests will have about as much magical ability as seen in medieval stories, i.e. no more than anyone else. (If you want to play a cleric, let me know. There’s a way we will handle it, but no player except one with a cleric PC will know about it.)

Similarly, not all thieves are in the Thief class, not all bards are in the Bard class, etc. Most fighters are “0th level”. There might be a fair number of 1st level Fighters; anybody else with levels will be uncommon. If you meet a bard on your travels, he will probably be a singer/harpist with no adventurer skills or class.

There is an old witch at the edge of the village. Your parents disapprove of her, call her a fraud, and are afraid of her. Everybody knows that the crop blight three years ago was because she was mad at the village.

The old folks in the village sometimes talk about how much better it was long ago. There was real travel, and real trade. Nobody knows what happened since.

You have heard many mutually conflicting tales of all kinds of marvelous heroes. You may assume that you have heard of any story of any hero you like – Gilgamesh, Oddysseus, Sigurd, Taliesin, Charlemagne, Lancelot, Robin Hood, Aragorn, Prester John, Baba Yaga, Prince Ōkuninushi, Br’er Rabbit, anyone. The old stories seem to imply that occasionally there have been several Ages of Heroes. Your parents don’t think these tales are good for you. Takes your mind off farming.

DO NOT assume that you know anything about any fantasy creatures. I will re-write many monsters and races, introduce some not in D&D, and eliminate some. The purpose is to make the world strange and mysterious. It will allow (require) PCs to learn, by trial and error, what works. Most of these changes I will not tell you in advance. Here are a couple, just to give you some idea what I mean.
1. Dragons are not color-coded for the benefits of the PCs.
2. Of elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, kobolds, goblins, and orcs, at least one does not exist, at least one is slightly different from the books, and at least one is wildly different.
3. Several monsters have different alignments from the books.
4. The name of an Undead will not tell you what will or won’t hurt it.
5. The first time you see a member of a humanoid race, I will describe it as a “vaguely man-shaped creature.” This could be a kobold, an elf, or an Umber Hulk until you learn what they are.

I will answer any reasonable questions about the village and its denizens. You do not know anything that cannot be learned in a backward, isolated village. (And yes, that’s why you’ve grown up semi-isolated.)

You will create your characters by allocating 80 points, with the following conditions.
1. Each stat must be between 3 and 18.
2. Any points over 16 will cost double. (So a 17 costs 18 points, and an 18 costs 20 points.)
3. You may only have one 18, and only two 17+.
4. I strongly urge you not to have a “dump stat”. An extremely low stat will affect what you can do.

I do not object to henchmen. Since they must be a lower level than the characters, it won’t come up immediately, but if the party eventually has henchmen, there will be reasonable opportunities for them to help. Finding a henchman who isn’t a bland fighter will be pretty rare. Finding a spellcaster will be extremely unlikely.

Your character is way behind the average starting D&D character in knowledge of the world. I am making up for that by giving each PC one 3E Feat (see below), and one unusual starting item you would normally not have at the start of a game. This item must be justified by the character, and must be acceptable to me. For instance, a Wizard could start the game with a familiar. A Bard could have a well-made harp. Somebody with Animal Training could have a trained dog already (but not a horse or bird of prey.) A fighter might have a boomerang as one weapon. Come up with something fun, useful, and unusual, but not outrageous. It won’t be a magic item, but it could be something rare.

Your first hit die will have its maximum value, but after that, you will roll. You will never have less than the average value for hit points overall. A first level fighter will start with 10 points. At 2nd level, he will roll a d10, and add that to the total. If the total is ever less than the average for that character, it will be moved up to the average. So a fourth level fighter, for instance, will not have fewer than 22 hit points.

Specific rules. Reasonable exceptions to these rules are allowed, within certain bounds. I won’t necessarily explain the bounds to you. (If I plan to have you carried off by Vikings, I won’t tell you why your character can’t speak Old Norse, for instance.) [I]Ask for exceptions. Your character should be an exception to the general rules in some way, and I’m prepared to modify PC rules to let you play something unique. I want you to have a character you will enjoy, but who won’t mess up my plans or overshadow the other characters.

1. All characters are human. If you want an exception, talk to me. We have to find a way for the non-human to fit into my plans for the start of the campaign, which I will not tell you. (For instance, you don’t know what races exist.) To reduce the negative impact of this rule, if your real goal is to multi-class, your human character may do so.
2. It will be possible for your character to get started within the village, so if you wish to be, for instance, a druid, there will be an older druid of some sort nearby. Tell me your plans, and I will arrange any necessary mentor or other resource.
3. You may choose any 2E class. If you want a class from another version, let me know, and we’ll try to work it out. (You can’t be a barbarian, because you grew up in a village. But if you wish to be a sorcerer, I will create a 2E-compliant sorcerer class.) If you want something that’s consistent with medieval fantasy but isn’t a standard D&D class, let’s talk. I want you to play the unusual (human) character that you’ve never been able to play before.
4. Whatever the character class you choose, your teachers or mentors weren’t high level, and can only get you started.
5. Spellcasters will start with only four spells, of which you will choose two and I will choose two. The two I choose for wizards will be Read Magic and Detect Magic. The two for Clerics will be Cure Light Wounds and Detect Evil. Initial spells must come from the Players Handbook. Unusual spells from other sources may be available later, but you didn’t learn them in your village. Necromantic spells are also not allowed at the start of the game.
6. Wizards will learn three new spells at each level, and will have other ways to develop them. Clerics will learn a new spell each adventure, and will have other ways to learn them. (Yes, they come from your god. But you have to know what to ask for, and how to use it. It’s a much easier process than for wizards, who must learn them from scratch.)
7. A cleric must choose a deity. This will be the deity who grants you spells. It will have a minor effect on the spells you get, but not much. The deity can be chosen from any pantheon. (Except Lovecraft!) Any other player may opt to choose a deity as well. A druid must choose a nature god. I’ll be loose in the definition of a nature god.
8. A Priest or Druid can choose to be a standard Priest or Druid, or you can ask for specific differences based on your god. I will be quite lenient here, as long as it makes sense. If you do this, however, I reserve the right to make some other specific strictures which you might or might not know about at the start.
9. None of you know anything about what happens to high-level characters. For instance, Druids may ignore everything in the PHB about the Druid Organization. There just aren’t that many high-level people in the world. We will use most of what the rulebooks say about followers and strongholds, but some of it will be modified. For one thing, not all creatures on the Ranger follower chart even exist. The thief follower table is also inconsistent with the world. Player desires will be encouraged. When we get to that point, be prepared to negotiate for something you would prefer.
10. All starting equipment will be things that can be produced in a small isolated village. You may have a spear, axe, sword or bow, but not an atl-atl, fancy crossbow, etc., unless it’s your unusual item. There may be exceptions. Ask for something you want.
11. Your character has (at least) one specific food-producing Non-Weapon Proficiency – farmer, swineherd, shepherd, etc.
12. Men and women are different in this period. All women will have at least one Non-Weapon Proficiency of sewing, cooking or embroidery, or some such, and all men will have leatherwork, woodwork, smith, or some equivalent. You don’t have to care about it, but that’s life in a small village. I urge the party as a whole to have sewing, leatherwork, and blacksmithing, just to repair clothes and armor. Otherwise, I’ll have to track any damage done. Similarly, if you don’t have a fletcher, I will count arrows.
13. All non-weapon proficiencies must be learnable in an isolated village, or from travelers’ tales. If you want an exception, come up with a justification. I respect good rationalizations. (Obvious examples include learning Latin from the village priest, astrology from a traveler, or herbalism from the witch.)
14. If you want a non-weapon proficiency that cannot be learned in the village, you may allocate the slot for it, and you will have a very rudimentary version of it, that will grow to the standard level with experience. That slot indicates that it’s a skill your character cares about, and pursues whenever possible. For instance, if you take Etiquette, then you will know how to behave in a village. If you get to an army garrison, you will quickly observe and learn military etiquette. Spend much time in a market, and you will learn how to behave in trade. If a noblewoman goes by, you will learn a little about how she acts, and about how people treat her. Skills for which this would be necessary include Spellcraft, Riding, Survival, Etiquette, etc. Feel free to take the skills you want. I’ll see that you learn them soon. This is to allow your characters to learn and grow quickly, and to have the full range of NWPs available. I urge each player to have one or two of these.
15. You grew up in a small village surrounded by an unexplored forest. There are wild animals and worse in the forest, and you have trained with at least one simple weapon. For this reason, your character can use your choice of a spear, short bow or short sword, regardless of character class. (You must choose one. Your character cannot use more than one of them unless both are allowed to his or her class.)
16. I intend to give each character a single 3E Feat. It will be chosen to be one that will make a first level character more usable and unique. If you aren’t interested in learning the 3E Feats – don’t worry. I’ll assign one that will be useful, and explain how it works. If you are interested in the rules, feel free to make a request. If it’s reasonable and doesn’t interfere with plans that you don’t know about, I’ll allow it. Toughness is not available. The goal of the Feat is not to make your character more generally competent, but to make him or her more competent in one specific area, to improve specific skills, or to have a unique option most people don’t have.

I repeat – ask for exceptions to these rules. I want you to play what you want, and to have an unusual character. For instance, if you have a character idea that can’t work if you grew up in a small village, talk to me, and we’ll try to make it fit in – but it might mean that you miss the first half of the first adventure. If you have some cool idea for something your character wants to start off with, let’s discuss it. I might say no, or have it replace the Feat or the unusual item, or just grant the exception.

This introduction is written for 2E. If enough people would prefer to play 1E, original D&D, or Fantasy Hero, I’m willing to switch.

The person planning to play a cleric asked about the gods, and I responded with this. (Also long.)

There are two gods called together The Uncreated. Separately, they are The Lord and The Lady, and nothing is known about them.

Their first children were the sun, the earth, the oceans, and the winds. These four are either the creators of our world, or the stuff of which it was created - it's not clear which. They are, of course, the essence of the four earthly elements, the embodiment of the elemental planes, and the structure of the world. There is a fifth one, representing the quintessence, but since that cannot exist on our changeable and imperfect world, he/she has no influence here.

They have an abundance of names. The Sun God, for instance, is known as Apollo, Aten, Ra, Tonatiuh, Surya, Helios and many others. Similarly, every earth goddess is known to be the true earth, born of The Lord and The Lady - even those with known other parents, or those with no parents, like Gaea. Attempts to question the logic of this are met with the sacred chant, "Hakuna heigh-ho fragilistic bibbidy chim-cheree," which has been variously translated as, "It is not wise to question these mysteries, which are beyond the knowledge of our world," or "Die, you heathen scum, die!" In practice, there is no significant difference between the two translations.

The children/creations of these four are the only gods who will answer prayers or interact with the world directly. They include all the pantheons that have ever existed

Except Lovecraft.

The Lord and The Lady have been identified as the embodiments of Good and Evil, or Law and Chaos, or Male and Female, or Light and Darkness, or any other opposing concepts.

Wars have been fought between those who believe they represent Good and Evil, and those who insist on Law and Chaos.

Wars have been fought between those who believe The Lord and The Lady hate each other with a hatred surpassing any passion on earth, and those who believe that they love each other with a love more true than any mortal could ever know.

Wars have been fought between those who know beyond all doubt that The Lord is Good and The Lady is Evil, and those who know beyond all doubt that The Lord is Evil and The Lady is Good.

All of the above is now available knowledge to the players. Here is what they do not know.

No arcane or divine magic will successfully find out any fact about The Lord and The Lady. I have three answers, all completely true, and mutually incompatible.

1. The Lord is Fate, and The Lady is Luck. Neither can exist without the other, and each action in the world, from a sneeze to the fall of an empire, is a victory of one of them over the other.
2. They are Yin and Yang, and the heart of each beats in the breast of the other. They represent complementary, not opposing, forces. Each is in fact all of the universe except the other, but neither one represents any specific principle (not even male and female), and whichever one represents goodness in one situation might be the evil in another. Together, they represent wholeness and balance
3. They are the Creators - the mother and father of the world, which they birthed and/or created for some great purpose which is not yet fulfilled.

No mortal can comprehend the true nature of any god. Therefore the image, history, and culture of any god are the simple stories people tell themselves about the gods, to comfort themselves into believing they know something.

Do you believe that your god is a Norse, hammer-throwing warlike thunder god with a red beard? Then that's what you see in your visualizations, and those are the aspects that your god shows to you.

So do you create the gods by your belief, or does the god who most closely resembles your belief respond to your prayers in the form you expect, or are they merely your own hallucinations that always occur as a side effect when invoking divine magic? One wise sage, Chicxulub the Philosophical, actually asked this question. He is said to have discovered the true answer after sixty years of study, prayer, and meditation, on March 23, in the year 643.

Incidentally, the largest impact crater ever discovered is the Chicxulub crater, which appeared on March 23, in the year 643. (Many have entered this crater to explore it. None have returned.)

Oh yes, and the fifth child of The Lord and The Lady, representing the Fifth Element? It turns out that he's not the stuff of the heavens, but of the hells. His children and descendants are all the demons, devils, and daemons. His creations are the evil spirits of the underworld. No, he's not out to conquer the world or destroy it or anything of that sort. He just likes to see war, strife, and pain.

critter3of4
2015-06-19, 01:08 PM
If my group consists of people I know, or strangers, I begin with The Same Page Tool (https://bankuei.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/the-same-page-tool/).

It helps establish everyone's expectation about what you're playing and how.


I like the survey. I answered the questions as best as I could. The answers may change.



Do you play to win?

a) Yes, you totally play to win! The win conditions are…
b) Good play isn’t a win/lose kind of thing

A) The win conditions are goals set by the module or created by characters to overcome problems.

Example: The players' initial goal is to travel to the homestead Sukiskyn in order to escort horses to a small town for sale. When the PCs arrive at Sukiskyn, their goal changes to survive the goblin siege.


Player characters are:

a) expected to work together; conflicts between them are mostly for show
b) expected to work together; but major conflicts might erupt but you’ll patch them up given some time
c) expected to work together; major conflicts might erupt and never see reconciliation
d) pursuing their own agendas – they might work together, they might work against each other
e) expected to work against each other, alliances are temporary at best

A). If the PCs are easily overcoming the set encounters, then I will increase the difficulty. The group should save their vitriol for their enemies, not each other.


The GM’s role is:

a) The GM preps a set of events – linear or branching; players run their characters through these events. The GM gives hints to provide direction.
b) The GM preps a map with NPCs and/or monsters. The players have their characters travel anywhere they can reach on the map, according to their own goals.
c) The GM has no plan – the GM simply plays the NPCs and has them act or react based on their motivations
d) There’s no GM. Everyone works together to make the story through freeform.
e) There’s no GM. The rules and the system coordinate it all.

Mostly A) and a little bit B). There are many points in the adventure that the path is clearly set before the PCs (i.e. A railroad) but there are places in the adventure where a goal is set but no clear path is known (i.e. sandbox).

I admit, I struggled with this one. Reviews of this module describe as a railroad with sandboxy elements.




The players’ roles are…

(ETA: Very much worth seeing*this post by Vincent for a more in-depth set of possibilities)

a) …to follow the GM’s lead to fit the story
b) …to set goals for their characters, and pursue them proactively
c) …to fling their characters into tough situations and make hard, sometimes, unwise choices

A). Normally, I like to give players the option to deviate from the goals I set out for the adventure, but I ...just like this module too much. Giving the PCs the option to ignore the adventure to pursue their own goals could undermine everything I'm working on.


Doing the smartest thing for your character’s survival…

a) …is what a good player does.
b) …sometimes isn’t as important as other choices
c) …isn’t even a concern or focus for this game.

A) This is a personal choice.


The GM’s role to the rules is…

a) …follow them, come what may. (including following house rules)
b) …ignore them when they conflict with what would be good for the story
c) …ignore them when they conflict with what “should” happen, based either on realism, the setting, or the genre

C) When it's obvious something should or shouldn't happen, I prefer common sense. Though when all else fails...follow the rules.


After many sessions of play, during one session, a player decides to have her character side with an enemy. This is…

a) …something that shouldn’t even happen. This is someone being a jerk.
b) …where the character becomes an NPC, right away or fairly soon.
c) …something the player and the GM should have set up ahead of time.
d) …only going to last until the other player characters find out and do something about it.
e) …a meaningful moment, powerful and an example of excellent play.

B) The enemies are clearly evil. This isn't an "evil" campaign.

I also prefer DMing and playing in groups where the PCs help each other towards a common goal, just a personal preference.


A fistfight breaks out in a bar! The details of where everything is – tables, chairs, where everyone is standing is something that…

a) …is important and will be displayed on a map or grid, perhaps using miniature figures.
b) …is something the GM will describe and you should ask questions to get more information.
c) …you can decide on the spot using specific game rules (rolling dice, spending points, whatever)
d) …isn’t really that important other than it makes for an interesting scene- pretty much anyone can come up with details.

A) I like grids. They reduce time wasting arguments.


In order to really have fun with this game, the rulebook is something that…

a) …everyone playing needs to have read and understood before play, because the rules and setting are both very important.
b) …everyone should know the rules very well.
c) …everyone should know the setting very well.
d) …everyone at least should know the basics of the rules.
e) …everyone at least should know the genre the game pulls from
f) …Only one person needs to really know the rules and it can be explained in 10 minutes or less to everyone else.

SPECIAL
Instead of “choose one” think of this as a checklist – pick which options apply, leave the ones that don’t.

C) and D) I'll be spending quite a bit of time explaining the setting. PCs should have a good idea of what their character's abilities.


This game runs best when the players take time to create characters that are…

a) …built to face challenges using the mechanics and stats.
b) …written with extensive backstories or histories
c) …given strong motivations and an immediate problem or crisis
d) …tied into the other characters as (allies) (enemies) (as either)
e) …written with some knowledge, research or reading up on the game setting, real history or an actual culture

A) and E) Create characters that can survive and fits in with setting.

The scope of the campaign is smaller, but with greater detail. It all takes place in a small region located in the Northeast part of Karameikos.


Fiction Hurdle Questions

Does everyone know the answers to these questions for this game?* Hopefully between the game text and making choices above, the group can also be on the same page for the following points.* If not, clarify!

1) What kind of conflicts make sense for this game?

2) What kind of protagonists make sense for this game?

3) What kind of outcomes make sense for this game?


1) It becomes apparent evil groups are active in the area. Their motivations must be discovered and their plans thwarted.

2) Characters who want to protect innocent people and thwart evil. Not necessarily Good (in the alignment sense), but definitely not Evil and probably not chaotic neutral.

A character proficient with the History skill will be a huge advantage. History plays a major part in the conflict.

Expect at some point to be negotiators in a conflict between two neutral parties.

3) Defeat the evil group. Discover the ancient history of the area

prufock
2015-06-20, 02:57 PM
"Session 0" for me is done through a facebook message group. I give them details of the world, what I expect from them as players, and character creation guidelines. They tell me what they want from me as a DM and ask any questions they feel they need to know about the world. They create characters on their own time. When we meet for session 1, we go full on into the campaign.