Pre-campaign

 

It is something that seems to come up a lot when there are issues with an rpg campaign, a lack of pre-campaign discussion including not having a session 0.  So, so many problems are minimized by having effective pre-campaign discussions.  Proper clarity on the key aspects of the game will reduce many issues.  Remember the primary goal is for everyone, including the GM, to have fun; and fun is not a zero-sum game.

This should start when the game master first decides that they want to run a campaign.  Before the first potential player is contacted the game master should have some basic ideas of what they want to run.  Regardless of what people claim, they have ideas of what kind of campaign they want to run.  What system are you using?  Is it a pre-made campaign, one you have already sketched out, or some kind of sandbox?  What about the setting?  A well established one, or one of your own creation?  You want some idea of the campaign you want to run before reaching out to players.  But it doesn’t have to be fully realized at this point.

 

 

When you reach out to people be sure to include more than just, “Hey I am thinking of running an rpg campaign are you interested?”.  Set the tone and plan from the beginning; identify the setting and what kind of campaign you want to run.  “Hey, I am thinking of running a pathfinder campaign where everyone is campy monster hunters fighting things like vampires, werewolves and ghosts.”  Otherwise people can roll into session 0 with character ideas that clearly won’t fit the campaign idea.  That being said, this does not mean that a campaign should purely be the ideas of the game master, no one wants to play through the GMs novel plotline.

Personally, if I am forming a new group I tend to reach out to one or two people first, gage their interest in my idea and refine it a bit before reaching out to the remaining potential players.  If the first couple are interested in gaming, but not keen on your initial idea you have a chance to refine or replace it before pitching to the rest of the players.

So session 0, it is something that is mentioned a lot, and is probably a solution to many problems I see mentioned by people with rpg campaigns.  What is it?  Session 0 is when the game master and all the players sit down together and talk about the campaign.  What does the GM want to run?  Do players have concerns with any of those ideas?  What characters do players want to play for this campaign?  If necessary, what tone or content will it focus on?  It isn’t that you want to completely spoil the cool reveals later in the campaign.  But it does no one any good if someone shows up to session 1 with an anti-Paladin for a campaign about overthrowing an evil king.  Or if all the players show up with skill monkeys in a campaign with a lot of combat.  Sometimes you can result in new better ideas, a GM that wanted to run a sandbox in a setting with only the core races as playable and all the players want to run skill monkeys; the idea everyone leaves with is focused around a rogue/thief/assassin guild that the players are part of.  Now everyone is happy with the plan and has a solid idea of where the character they create can fit in the world; and the game master can start developing the guild, targets and rivals.

There is no one formulated way to do session 0, some parties will make their characters together as part of it, others will identify the general concept of their character but build it themselves before session 1 while other parties won’t even specifically talk about their characters.  Exactly what you cover in session 0 will depend on the people that are part of the gaming group.  I have seen cases where session 0 flows immediately into the first real session.  I have also seen game masters have individual discussions after session 0 to fully integrate all the player characters into the world and establish how they ended up at the starting point.

There are even mini-games or other products for collaboratively generating a setting, or a city-state that some parties use to increase buy-in from players.  This can be risky however, because what is cool in the mini-game may break any decent ability to run a campaign in the setting.  It also may not work depending on the setting or ideas the game master has for the campaign.  Like the larger campaign, some pre-established boundaries may be required.

 

 

It is possible that the outcome of session 0 or other pre-campaign activities is that it is clear that some people in the initial group are not a good fit, maybe players clash or none of a player’s ideas fit with what the rest of the party or GM want to do.  While disappointing, it is better to identify this before a campaign starts then have the campaign dragged down but problems that could easily have been identified beforehand.

Now before I close, I do want to note that it is important to continue the out of game dialog about what is working and what isn’t working or should be tweaked to keep everyone super keen about the next session.  Always remember that the goal is for everyone to have fun, all the players and the game master and if someone isn’t it is everyone’s responsibility to figure out how to fix it if someone isn’t.  Communication is key to keeping a campaign fun for all.

Really the key thing from pre-campaign stuff is to make sure that no one goes into a campaign with different expectations than the game master or the rest of the party.  Let me know what you think is important from session 0 and other pre-campaign activities.