The one thing everybody at the table wants

Hey y’all,

Welcome to Volume 3, and welcome back to the workshop.

As I started to prep my next campaign run, I was spending some time thinking about the little hiccups early that can lead to issues several sessions in. When you read GM guides, reddit, wherever, nobody seems to warn you about one quiet trap at the beginning of the campaign. That moment when the map’s blank or fogged, everyone’s fired up and ready to roll, and the fastest way to kill that energy is to then spend session one hashing out who knows who and why these six strangers are sharing a wagon. So, naturally, most of us skip it, drop everyone in a tavern or scenario, and hope it sorts itself out. The truth is, sometimes (a lot of times?) it doesn’t. You feel the gap around session four or five, when nobody can remember why they’re still traveling together. You’ve hit an adventuring milestone, are trying to steer towards the next, and you suddenly realize the party isn’t connected by anything other than some rolls and a loot table.

In theory, session zero is supposed to fix that. But “session zero” has ballooned into a whole evening of lore dumps, build questions, and physical or digital processes nobody really wants to run. So here’s the smallest version I’ve found that actually does the job. It takes five minutes, and it works at the table or in a group text or discord.

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THE TOOL: a five-minute session zero

1. Everyone writes down one thing they want to see this campaign. I’m not talking about a plan, I’m not talking about generating your own sidequest and railroading the DM. I’m talking about a moment. “I want to lose something I can’t buy back.” “I want a villain we end up respecting.” “I want one session that’s just a festival, no dice.” Here’s a pro-tip, the GM writes one too.

2. Read them out loud. Really important piece here: no discussion, no promising to deliver any of them. Just put them into the universe.

3. Everyone picks someone else’s wish and says one way their character is tied to it. That’s it, that’s your party. You just built why they travel together out of what people actually came to your game for.

Keep the list. Now, the GM’s got a map of what the table wants instead of a guess. The players have something at stake that isn’t hit points or loot, and the quiet one who never says much just told you exactly what to aim for, in one sentence, on day one instead of session eight when they’ve already checked out.

If you get stuck for a wish? Roll a d6: (1) someone from my past shows up, and it’s bad. (2) we find a place worth defending (3) my character is wrong about something important. (4) we make an enemy we could’ve avoided. (5) we have a quiet night that isn’t a trap or a setup. (6) I get to be the hero once, out loud and visible.

That’s it. that’s the whole thing. So: what’s the one thing you want to see at your table this year? Hit reply and tell me. Even better, tell your table. You’ll be shocked how it changes the game.

THE FIND

Here it is, something from someone else’s table: Microscope, by Ben Robbins, is a game with no GM where the whole group builds the history of a world together, jumping around the timeline, zooming from the fall of an empire down to one terrible morning in a tavern. It’s the tool I mentioned above turned all the way up: you make the world by arguing about what mattered in it, and by the end you care about people who didn’t exist an hour ago. You can run it as its own night, or use it once to build the world your regular campaign lives in. I can’t believe more people haven’t heard of it. Heck, I can’t believe I’d never seen it, because it’s awesome. Check it out over at: lamemage.itch.io/microscope

FROM THE WORKSHOP

If that session zero is your speed, The Session Zero Kit is the fuller version, it’s got five printable sheets for starting a campaign the whole table has a stake in. You can use it to help launch your campaign, or after you’ve started to help solidify some things that feel missing. There’s a lot more coming, and the free stuff’s still free too, The Night’s Ledger for the GM side and the Player Cheat Cards for the players, both name-your-price on itch. The rest of the shelf is over on Etsy if you want to poke around.

Thanks for staying. We’ll pick up next week.

-J