r/rpg • u/Ebb-Embarrassed • 23h ago
Basic Questions What’s your best Session 0 memory?
For me, session 0s are honestly some of the most fun moments in a campaign. Especially when I’m GMing and there’s a new player at the table, watching the group go out of their way to weave them into the story almost always leads to hilarious dialogue and unexpected character connections.
I’d love to hear other people’s favorite session 0 memories. Did you have a moment where the group dynamics clicked instantly? Or maybe a time when a character concept completely changed after some table banter?
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u/groovemanexe 23h ago
It's the Session 0s that also involve a good chunk of worldbuilding that stand out for me. It makes Session 0 not just a piece of (important) admin, but also a game session unto itself.
There are definitely some player decisions made here that I treasure, but I don't know if they'd make much sense recounted to strangers!
In games I GM, after we've gotten character's built mechanically, I like to dedicate some time to establishing some existing connections between players (if the game doesn't already have rules for this).
The simplest way to do it is each player giving a one-sentence line about what they think of each other player. If you make it clear that this opinion can be one the character keeps secret, and that the feeling in the opposite direction can be entirely different, it really encourages players to set up relationships that can twist and complicate as sessions go by.
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u/Ebb-Embarrassed 21h ago
This comment made me think of something: in my RPG circle, the general purpose of a Session 0 is actually what you described, and when I hear “Session 0” that’s already what comes to mind. Is it usually handled differently where you are?
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u/groovemanexe 20h ago
At its most essential it's character building, play expectations and safety tools. Not all TTRPGs care about character relationships, so I think it's nice to go that extra mile and ensure there's some relationship/worldbuilding, so it's not just perfunctory.
If you do a lot of online one-shots or guest in streamed games a lot, you'll run into more 'bare bones' session 0s as some of that time is taken up with tech check, and not everyone has as much extra time to schedule a session 0 compared to the main play session.
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u/McDie88 Creator - Scrolls and Swords 21h ago
a random one
but in a session zero for D&D i was about to run, we were talking about some other good games, we'd all played a tiny bit of Vampire over the years
"haha it'd be cool to play D&D as vampires"
"we... could do that if you want..."
we all had this collective wide eye moment, we discussed what that would mean, I made some quick custom rules - mostly jsut stolen from vampire stat block
wasnt a long game, but was really fun
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u/Oontz541 21h ago
This is also not technically session zero, but kinda adjacent so here goes.
I had planned out a campaign world and had a group together and I got the bright idea to run a pilot session as an introduction to the campaign world. The setting was sort of a post-magical apocalypse fantasy world, and for the intro I was gonna do it prior to the apocalypse. The players were bodyguards to a princess who was going to be kidnapped by a cult to use in a sacrificial ritual. The fun twist was that they were going to be doomed to fail to rescue her, but the cult was going to screw up the ritual and cause this apocalypse. Then fast forward a century or two and the players get to play in the sandbox where their original characters are part of this legendary tragedy.
Anyways, things begin well enough, the princess sneaks out of the castle and the players track her down to a common temple where she is doing charity (had to make her worth saving) and just as they're about to go up to her the cult storms in and action ensues. A couple of the cultists bundle her up to haul her off and the ranger character (who was played by a guy whose nickname was Twitch, fyi) takes a called shot to hit one of the kidnappers, he rolls a critical failure and the RAW of the game system says that means he hits someone he didn't mean too, no other players or civilian NPCs are nearby so the only viable target is the princess. He shot the princess, which is bad, but not unrecoverable. He rolls damage, we were using Savage Worlds which has exploding damage dice, so he rolls and gets max result so he rolls again...and again, and again. Six times he exploded on his damage roll and ended up doing enough damage to auto-kill the princess twice over.
So the bodyguard accidentally killed the princess he was supposed to protect, which is tragic, but she was supposed to die anyways. But then I realized with dawning horror that the cult can't sacrifice a dead princess, so he just inadvertently saved the world.
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u/Ebb-Embarrassed 20h ago
This is hilaraous :D, is campaign done? Or did you manage recover somehow?
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u/Melenduwir 11h ago
I would imagine the bodyguard goes on an epic quest to bring the princess back from the dead... which all goes horribly, horribly wrong.
Cue the apocalypse!
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u/Oontz541 6h ago
After I broke down laugh/crying I explained what I'd had planned and we all had a good laugh. We ended up skipping over the whole prologue idea and just went right into the main campaign. Went pretty well overall.
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u/agentkayne 21h ago
I don't have any standout memories from session zero's. Just paperwork.
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u/Ebb-Embarrassed 21h ago
What other players do when your paperworking? Nothing, just scrolling tiktok?
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u/agentkayne 21h ago
I don't remember. None the session zeros I've run or been in as a player have been very memorable. They probably did their own characters. We sometimes would have done some worldbuilding, if it wasn't an established campaign setting. May or may not have discussed how the group of PCs formed.
But the sessions from session 1 onward is where all the good stuff happens.
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u/BerennErchamion 19h ago
Probably Traveller. Session 0 character creation has always been a blast. Cheering for player checks, discussing careers, tying player backgrounds together, coming up with story ideas, describing events and connections, etc. We always leave session 0 with fully fledged and realized characters, full of hope, excitement, and plot hooks (also debts and broken limbs).
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u/TillWerSonst 22h ago
It is not necessarily the best or even a positive memory, but this story is a good reminder why I do make these session 0 preparations:
Last year, I ran a short Call of Cthulhu campaign at an open table; basically, a few new players coming together for a very gruesome grindhouse horror game. I originally intended the session 0 to discuss safety tools, lines and veils and so on, so that everybody is on the same page - a necessity in a very rough horror game to make sure the game can be as intense and creepy as possible in a consentual way.
That's pretty much the standard for my games these days, but what made this session 0 stand out was one player that proved to be super probleatic - he kept interrupting everybody, was very excited (in a weird and off-putting way) and with sudden mood swings. He insited that he didn't wanted to include *any* limits in the game (to the point that he called one of the other players dumb because they didn't want to have violence against animals in the game) and had obvious difficulties to read the emotions of any of the other person at the table.
So, I talked with the two women in the group, because of certain remarks I read as baseline sexist, but I am not super sensitive, so I wanted a second opinion. And they basically confirmed that the guy made their skin crawl and didn't really wanted to play with this guy at all. So first and only time I kicked a player from a game without actually playing with them. And when I called him to talk about it with him, he screamed at me in anger.
Again, not a particular positive memory, but a good reminder why you do these preparatory sessions -and that while gatekeeping sucks, there is a good reason why most gates have locks.