Session Zero is probably the most important session you will have if you are going to be running a campaign, even if it is with friends. It’s the session in which you set expectations for the campaign going forward.

For those that are new to these terms, a campaign is a story told over a series of game sessions, whereas a one-shot is a self contained game in a single session. A campaign can last for weeks, months, or even years, whereas one-shots can be as little as an hour long.

Top tip: An agenda is a great idea. It will help you ensure that you cover everything you need to. Things you can cover in this session can be character creation, or going over character sheets; working out if characters know each other previously; and setting rules going forwards. In my online games, because I am usually bringing strangers together, I also like to run a short one-shot to see what the dynamic is like within the group, and if any players are potentially going to be a problem. This also helps the players to see my style of DMing and to see if they like it - it’s a two way process after all!

If you’re new to each other, take some time to introduce yourselves. It can help to find out what each person’s experience is with D&D, so you are aware of which players may need more coaching. You can support them yourself when asking for rolls by clearly stating what you are asking for, or you can team them up with a more experienced player (if you have one at the table) who can help them understand what they need to do. I teach new players quite often, so I explain what I’m asking for quite clearly (“I’d like you to roll a perception check, so that’s a d20 plus your perception modifier which is on the skills list”), and I have various handouts that I’ve written that I can give to new players to help them along. It’s also good to find out what people want from their games. Some players love combat, and would like to have one or two encounters per session, whereas others love the roleplay aspect, and would be happy to have sessions where there is no combat present at all. Knowing this at the outset helps you tailor your game so the players can get the most enjoyment from their sessions, as you will all be aware of where the balance needs to lie between roleplay and combat.

An important thing to do in this session is to write conduct rules. Make this a collaborative process and make sure everyone agrees by the rules you come up with. As a DM, it’s your role to enforce them, and by setting these out right at the beginning, there is less chance for any disagreements later on. Having said that, make your rules flexible enough so that you can add a rule in later on if it doesn’t occur to you at the time.

I have some preset conduct rules for my games, and I invite players to read them, agree them, and contribute their own suggestions. They’re very straightforward standard things, but what I allow and disallow at my table might be different for your table. For example, I am personally uncomfortable with graphic sexual descriptions. I won’t allow erotic roleplay or any descriptions of this type at my table. However, if you want to go into gruesome detail as to how your character has brutally maimed this orc chieftain, be my guest. I also have some house rules on critical hits that I use in non Adventurer’s League games, that I like to explain to my players.

If there are rules, there also need to be consequences for breaking those rules, and if these are also clear at the outset, then a player who is penalized should not be surprised when this happens. I tend not to remove people from my table unless it is really warranted. Again, I highlight communication here. Usually speaking to a player in private is enough to highlight an issue and rectify it. Some players may not even realize they are breaking a rule, if it is something like “no metagaming”. Give people a chance to change their behaviors where you think it is appropriate.

Something you can do if players are breaking minor rules is to impose setbacks at the table. If you give a player a clear warning to not talk over you or to abide by a ruling you have made, and they continue to disregard your warning, then you could impose disadvantage on their next roll. This doesn’t remove their agency or harshly penalize their character, but it does give consequences to behavior. And ultimately, if you cannot resolve issues, you do reserve the right to remove someone from your table. As DM, you are there to have fun as much as the players are, and managing a disruptive element is generally not a fun task.

Here are a few examples of things I include in my agendas and rules. They are not an exhaustive list, and as ever, what works for me may not work for you. This is just intended as inspiration, for you to use and amend as your own.

Sample Agenda:

• Introductions
• What do you want from the game?
• Character Creation
• Rules and how to apply them
• One-shot (if running at session zero)
• Agree schedule going forwards
• What we will do if people can’t make a session

My rule examples:

1. HAVE FUN! (This is the most important rule!)
2. Respect everyone at the table. Be engaged when it’s not your turn and not on your phone or having a conversation with someone else. Personally I find that kind of behavior rude, and I will ask people to focus if they are not doing so.
3. No real world sexism/racism/other isms are acceptable. I may incorporate NPCs who have prejudices to affect interactions, and equally I will allow PCs with prejudices in my game, as this can add an interesting dynamic, but this does not represent my real world views and I do not condone that sort of behavior outside of the game world.
4. No graphic sexual descriptions or erotic role play. It’s not necessary to tell a good story. I have no problem with romance, I just do not need to know exactly how it played out in the bedroom.
5. I don’t do critical success or failure on skill checks. RAW, that’s not a thing, although I know a lot of DMs rule that it is. That’s their table, this is mine. Also, don’t assume you succeed or fail on a roll. I’m the one that determines the success, and I work DCs in my own way. I may have a sliding scale of information, I might have a higher or lower DC than you anticipate, or it might be different for different PCs depending on their character, background or environmental factors! I also don’t like players saying “I’ll roll perception/investigation/whatever”. Again, you should describe to me what your character wants to do, and I’ll tell you what skill to roll, because it might not be what you are expecting!
6. Leading on from that, I don’t like people to rules lawyer, metagame, or otherwise ruin people’s fun in this way. My table is there to collaborate and tell a shared story. As a DM, I am here to interpret the rules. I don’t know all the rules, so I may have to pause and look something up. Sometimes the answer won’t be immediately obvious. I’ll make a ruling that makes sense at the time based on my judgement of the situation and we’ll move on. Abide by that ruling at the time. When I go and check up on it later, if I find that I’ve got it wrong, I’ll own up, and we’ll work out a fix going forwards, but at the time, we’ll adjudicate, move on, and enjoy the game.

Frank has given me some good points to add in regarding the last rule. If you don’t know the rules well, having someone more experienced at the table who does can be a huge help and you can lean on their experience and ask them to help adjudicate. This was certainly my situation to begin with. Later on, once I was confident enough with my knowledge, I had to step up and say to my players that I was now confident enough, and that whilst their experience was valued, I was now taking charge and would only solicit that experience if absolutely necessary. At my tables, my word is final and that is how it should be with any DM running a game. This doesn’t mean you should be in an adversarial situation. The point is to avoid the argument by saying “this is what we will do on this occasion, let’s move on with the game and look at the detail later”

I hope this article has helped you understand why Session Zero is a good idea, and given you some inspiration for what to include in your Session Zeroes! 

-Mazz

You’ve probably heard this phrase a lot. Other DMs will tell you - schedule organisation is one of the worst/toughest/soul-destroying parts of running a D&D game. We all have one of those pesky life things happening. Work, school, hobbies, clubs, TV, even just plain old emergencies can make scheduling a D&D game a nightmare.

My own schedule for games is intense. I run games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights in my own homebrew world, I run two Curse of Strahd campaigns on alternate weeks on a Thursday night (So every Thursday I’m playing a CoS game, but the groups experience the sessions fortnightly), I run in person sessions every other week at my local gaming club, I have a family game that we get together every month or so to play, and I’m setting up a play by post Discord server for people who are either unable or unwilling to play in person or by voice chat, so they are able to play a text based D&D game in a safe environment.

Because I run so many games, something I have done in my groups to avoid burnout is to schedule a week off every month for the two homebrew games. My groups knew from the outset that the first week of the month is going to be a break week, so I get time to relax, catch up on writing the arc going forward, and don’t get too overwhelmed with how much I have to do. Some of my players are now stepping up in that break week to run oneshots, which is brilliant!

Depending on how you play D&D, and who you play with, scheduling games is made easier or harder. If you are running a oneshot, then you only need to find one time when people are available to commit to that game. Starting a campaign? Well… you’re going to need to work out how frequently people can commit to those sessions and hope they are often enough to keep the momentum of the story going. You’re going to need to decide how you are going to tackle this challenge before you even get to Session Zero.

If you’re setting up a new campaign, either online or at a gaming club, or starting your own weekly club, theoretically, it’s easier. You decide a time that works for YOU, and then post about it in relevant places, and watch the applications fly in. Which is mostly true. Some people will beg you to change times to slightly earlier, or later, or another day.

Set expectations early, and stick to your guns. DMs have enough to worry about without becoming the group’s Personal Assistant. You’re not there to manage their schedules. If you’re going to give warnings to people for dropping out, and/or kick them from the game if they can’t commit, make this clear at the start. Decide how many people are going to be the absolute minimum for running the session. If you have a 4 person party in your campaign and 2 drop out, is it feasible to continue to run the story that session with the other two? Could you run a sidequest or oneshot instead?

Decide how much notice people should be giving you before dropping out of a session. Obviously if there is an emergency, then it can’t be helped, but generally you should have notice so that you can make a decision on whether you want to cancel or reschedule. Some players are flakier than others, are you happy to allow that at your table? It might be that you have a good friend that is an amazing player, but they sometimes have other things going on and cancel at short notice because that’s just how they are. You might be okay with that and be able to work around it.

Don’t be afraid to put scheduling back onto the players. If they want to reschedule, tell them the times you’re available to run the session, and then make it clear that it’s up to them to organise themselves and let you know when to join them, else there will be no session. And don’t be afraid to just not have a session if people can’t get organised. Sometimes it needs to happen to make people realise that you aren’t going to be doing all the running.

Most importantly though, and a theme I will keep returning to in these articles, is communication. If you and your players all talk to each other outside of the game, scheduling and other issues will be much easier to resolve. For my online games, we have a discord server, and we are always hopping in to check times and notify each other of schedules, as well as just chatting about anything else that comes to mind. We were strangers at the start of this campaign, and we've now built up a good friendship group outside of the table.

To sum up: You’re not the groups PA. Although the DM role is to adjudicate and ostensibly run sessions, you are also there to have fun and play the game too. Everyone needs to shoulder the responsibility of scheduling themselves for a game. And don’t be afraid to take a break if you need to. It’s better to take that break and avoid burnout, rather than pushing on and potentially making your group, and yourself, resent the game you are running.

Hope this helps, and I’ll see you soon for another article!

-Mazz

When I started writing the articles for this blog, I wanted a second eye on what I was putting out there, so I didn't say anything too outrageous. One of the players in my regular games, Frank, is also a new DM with a similar amount of experience to myself, so to me he was the obvious choice. We get on really well, bouncing ideas off each other and stealing things from each other for our own campaigns! I've therefore gotten him to write a little intro too, since he'll be chipping in here and there.

Bonjour, everyone! I'm Frank, and like Mazz here I've been a DnD 5E DM since about May 2017, though I had started playing in January. I was also not the best when I first started, but after some trial and error I've managed to find my groove with the group that I DM regularly (and also smaller groups I run one shots for.) Comparing myself to Mazz, I run a much looser style of game, a lot less focused on RAW, and also with a lot less prep (sometimes going into sessions totally blind.) My main role for this blog is to give a second opinion on certain topics from my point of view. You'll often see my own notes written in with Mazz's (whether or not those notes will be called "Frankly Speaking" is up to Mazz and her obsession with puns, haha.)

Going over my own DM heroes, Matt Mercer is definitely up there. I have shamelessly stolen a lot of ideas from him to use in my own game (his resurrection rules, "how do you want to do this", etc.) I'm also a really big fan of The Adventure Zone's Griffin McElroy and his skills as a DnD storyteller. Respect must also be paid to Chris Perkins and the awesome work he's done on Acq. Inq. and DCA.

That's all from me for now, I hope to see you all soon on this awesome project! Au revoir!

Find Frank on twitter here

Please note - Frank greatly overestimates the amount of prep I do. We talked about it after he wrote this, and we agreed that one of the things good DMs do is look like they know what they are doing. If you have the confidence, a wholly improvised session can seem like the most perfectly planned and executed game to your players. And little things you make up on the spur of the moment can turn into key points in your campaign. But that's something we can talk about in another article.

Thanks for reading, and the first DM article, "Herding Cats", will be posted tomorrow!

-Mazz

Hi, I’m Mazz! You've probably seen me around twitter, showing off my yarn creations and making terrible puns. I also often talk about my D&D games. I’ve been a 5e D&D DM since May 2017, and like most people trying out the DM chair, I was not... polished... in my first session. I would say I've definitely improved a lot since then, mostly just by watching streams of D&D games. My DM hero is undoubtedly Chris Perkins, and I have learned a great deal just from watching how he runs a game. It’s not just all about him though, as there are so many games out there now to watch with fantastic DMs like Lauren Urban, Satine Phoenix, Ruty Rutenberg, Christopher Lindsay and Matt Mercer.

I know there are many people putting DM tips out there, but I didn’t feel like there was a tutorial or walkthrough type guide on how to run a D&D game, so I decided to write one. Obviously this is just my take on how I do things, and I don’t have years of experience. I’m still learning a lot as I go, but I hope my thoughts go some way to demystifying my processes and encouraging other people to take up the DMs chair!

Stay tuned, as my first article on being a DM will be going up very soon!

-Mazz