Starting the Campaign: Session Zero

We played a session zero for the Rusheniya campaign this weekend, and it was great fun. The players had enjoyed the work and detail I put into the setting so far, and did not disappoint with their connections to the city!

We started the session with player introductions and a discussion of Lines and Veils, then moved into what they had for their character concepts:

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• A tiefling rogue who grew up in an orphanage and now works for the Outstretched Hand as a Robin Hood type of character.
• A human sorcerer whose powers emerged later in life and was quickly recruited by the Arcanum. He grew up poor, and his mother still lives in a tenement and works as a maid for one of the noble houses. He would like to know why the Arcanum is so interested in him.
• A young noble (from the house where the sorcerer’s mother works) who is currently going incognito as a member of the lower class. The charade is part of a bet undertaken by a clique from the Revelry. (The player had drawn a picture of the PC, which was really cool.)
• A satyr bard, former master-at-arms for the royal family who left her position after becoming disillusioned with the privileged behavior of the noble class and is now affiliated with the Outstretched Hand.

We discussed their personalities and physical appearances, then I provided a list of questions for them to ask each other in character. This was an idea I had from a Cypher System one-shot run by Jason from Shadomain.com. In each round of questions, each PC asks one other PC a question. I don’t remember the questions he had us ask each other, but it was a fun exercise, so I made up my own questions.

For the first round of questions, I had each PC ask one other “How did we meet?” We didn’t get all the meeting stories, and we agreed they didn’t have to be canon for the campaign, just ideas to build from and a way to get a feel for the PC’s personalities. I did not take a lot of notes about what the players said about their characters. One player was unsure about being creative on the fly and received encouragement from the other players who were happy to build on whatever came up.

In the second round of questions, the PCs had to ask a different person one of these questions:
Why did we get kicked out of the tavern that night?”
How did we lose that thing we found?
What was the best thing we accomplished together?
How did we escape from that place?
There were a few funny stories, and I made sure the more tentative player had their choice of questions.

For the third round, the questions got a little more personal:
What do we laugh about the most?
What is it about me that annoys you?
What is it about me that makes you happy?
What have you told me that you’ve not told anyone else?
These turned out really interesting, and we found out that the rogue may know more about the undercover noble than the latter had planned on revealing based on that last question.

I then asked each player what they hoped their PC would get a chance to do. I do plan to incorporate some of these ideas into the overall campaign. We also discussed where each PC was likely to call home, and then looked at the map of the city and some of the location descriptions. I explained that I typically used theater of the mind for encounters, but liked to provide maps so the players had some context. They asked a few questions about the setting, and I suggested a couple procedural things like rolling our own dice, getting max damage from the first die roll on a critical hit, and using perception checks to determine who gets the clues (rather than as opportunities to miss the clues).

We hung out a bit after that and talked about our experiences with other games and systems before everyone logged off. One player might not be able to make the first session, so I’m planning on a few short prologue encounters for the rest of the PCs. I’m looking forward to our next session in a couple weeks!