How to run a session zero
The Talehaven team8 min read
Before the first roll, agree on what kind of game you are actually playing. Tone, boundaries, characters, expectations and a few decisions that can save the whole group from problems later.
A session zero is the meeting before the campaign, not its first episode. Nobody dies, nobody rolls initiative. You settle on the game you all want to run, so that three weeks in you do not discover half the table was picturing something completely different.
Short answer
A session zero is a meeting where the whole group agrees on the campaign’s tone and genre, the boundaries for what belongs at the table, character concepts that fit a single party, and expectations around attendance and scheduling. You are not building the plot, you are agreeing on the rules you will play by.
What to settle in a session zero
Agree on tone and genre
A grim siege or a rambling mountain adventure? Gritty realism or heroic excess? Say it out loud, because everyone at the table is running a different film in their head. One line like "bleak survival with a spark of hope" sets more than an hour of guessing.
Cover boundaries, matter-of-factly
Agree on what should not show up at the table, and how to pull it back mid-game. An X-card, lines and veils, a plain "stop" - it does not matter which, as long as everyone knows it works. This is not a heavy conversation, it is a box to tick, like agreeing on how initiative rolls.
Build characters for one party
Everyone brings a concept, but check together whether these five would actually sit around one fire. A lone avenger who trusts no one sounds great until they have to carry a campaign alongside four other people.
Connect the characters to each other
Give each pair of players one shared line from the past: a debt, a shared secret, an old fight. A party with reasons to stick together from the first scene saves you inventing why they travel at all.
Set attendance and scheduling
How often you play, what time you start, what happens when someone cannot make it. Settle it now, calmly, not on Thursday at 8pm when two people are typing "not sure I can make it". A steady rhythm keeps a campaign alive better than any plot.
Write the agreements down in one place
Tone, boundaries, character ties, attendance rules - all where everyone can look, not in one person’s private notes. Two months from now nobody will remember what you agreed on.
A session zero for Alpendorf
Tone: bleak survival in a dying mining settlement, but with a real chance the place can be saved. No heroic excess, and every decision carries weight.
Boundaries: the group ticks an X-card and a veil over scenes with children in the collapsed mine. Nobody makes a drama of it, it is simply understood.
Characters: instead of five strangers, each pair gets a shared thread - two of them remember the cave-in three winters ago, one owes the foreman money.
Scheduling: every other Thursday, start at 7pm, we play even with four people, because otherwise the campaign drifts apart by the holidays.
Half an hour of agreements, and the first real session opens with a ready, connected party instead of five strangers in a tavern.
Common challenges
- Treating session zero as wasted time and diving straight into the plot, then firefighting for half the campaign.
- Turning the boundaries conversation into heavy therapy instead of a plain, practical item to settle.
- Signing off on five characters who have no reason at all to travel together.
- Keeping the agreements in the GM’s head rather than somewhere the whole group can look.
Keep your agreements where everyone can look
Tone, boundaries, character ties and scheduling in one place, not in private notes. The campaign holds together from the very first scene.