How to Run a Session 0 for Your D&D Game

Tags Dungeon Master Tips player tips New Player's Guide

Running a session 0 can be the difference between having a long-running campaign with friends and a halting, awkward campaign that withers after a few uncomfortable weeks. This pre-campaign checkpoint can be a quick, breezy calibrating of expectations before your game starts, just like a video game might ask you to calibrate the brightness of your monitor before you start playing to ensure a smooth gameplay experience.

So, let's dive into what a session 0 is and how you can run one with your group!

What Is a Session 0?

Artist: Kent DavisAdventurers raise their tankards of ale in a tavern.

Covered in chapter 4 of Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, session 0 is a time for everyone in a D&D group to express what they want out of the campaign. During this session, every group will cover something different based on how well they're acquainted. Some groups that are more familiar with each other might discuss what they want out of the game’s combat, storytelling, and characters. On the other hand, groups that are just starting out will often go more in-depth into the campaign's rules for social conduct.

Session 0 can take fifteen minutes or three hours, depending on how many topics you want to cover and how deeply you end up talking about them. We cover examples of topics in our session 0 checklist below.

Session 0 Checklist

When participating in a session 0, you're joining a social contract with your other players. D&D is a game, after all, and games are supposed to be fun. When you discuss boundaries and expectations for your D&D sessions, the other players put their trust in you, and you put your trust in them to uphold these guidelines so everyone can have fun.

The following topics are just suggestions of what to include in your session 0, but you’ll probably come up with more topics as you read this article, talk through your session 0, or even later as you’re playing your campaign.

General

  • Experience: What’s everyone’s D&D experience level? Who’s never played, only watched, only played a few times, or has only played an older edition?
  • Type of Campaign: Do you want the players’ actions to drive the story? Or do you want the characters to get caught up in a larger whirlwind plot?
  • Level of Lore: Do you like worlds with deep lore and Tolkienesque histories? Or do you prefer fantasy worlds with a more fairytale-like simplicity?
  • Schedule of Play: When and how often would you like to meet?
  • Meeting: How will we meet? (Video call, Discord, in-person, etc.)

Gameplay

  • Combat: Do you like tactical combat with maps, minis, and meticulous counting of movement and spell ranges? Or do you prefer more free-flowing, narrative-focused combat without such granular attention to detail?
  • Genre: What genre of game do we want to play? And what level of emotional intensity (romance, horror, etc.) are you comfortable with? What movie rating would you like the campaign to be?
  • Roleplay: What level of roleplay is everyone comfortable with? Is out-of-character discussion allowed? Can decisions be retconned?
  • House Rules: What rules will be used that differ from the official rules?

Characters

  • Character Creation: Will we be creating characters and writing their backstory together? What level do we start at? What ability score generation methods are allowed?
  • Character Limitations: What species, classes, spells, feats, and backgrounds are allowed?
  • Magic Items: How common are magic items, how can the party acquire them, and are there any that are disallowed? Also, is there any specific magic item your character wants at some point in the campaign?
  • Progression: How and when will characters level up? What level is the campaign expected to reach?
  • Alignment: What character alignments are welcome in the campaign? Under what circumstances could an alignment change?

Safety and Comfortability

  • Hard and Soft Limits: Are there any topics you don’t want to come up at all in this game? Are there any topics you are uncomfortable with but can handle in small doses or as a background element?
  • Safety Tools: What safety tools should we use?
  • Table Restrictions: What's allowed or not allowed at the table? (Phones, alcohol, etc.)
  • PvP: What happens in a player-versus-player scenario? Can players steal from one another? What happens if an argument breaks out between two player characters?

If a topic comes up that you don't have an answer to, "I don’t know" or "I don’t know yet, but I’ll let you know" are perfectly acceptable responses.

It’s also okay to have multiple session 0s. If there are ever big questions you need to talk to the whole group (or even just more than one person about), it’s worth saying, "Let’s have a quick session 0 before today’s game, please."

Setting and Managing Expectations in Session 0

Artist: WADE ACUFFGoblins rough housing at dinner, to the chef's chagrin.

The most important aspect of session 0 is to manage expectations. D&D is at its best when everyone agrees on certain things. Not everything, of course; some fun moments in D&D are the result of a bit of platonic disagreement between players.

But be careful when your players come to the table, and all blithely agree they want to play a campaign like The Adventure Zone. One player might mean they want all the jokey, brotherly fun of early The Adventure Zone episodes, while someone else means they’re excited to break hearts with a campaign full of the teary-eyed drama of later The Adventure Zone episodes.

If you don’t set clear expectations upfront and manage them throughout the game, someone is going to walk away disappointed.

Accommodating Different Expectations

If players want different things from the campaign, it doesn't mean you have to break up the group and find different people to play with.

One campaign can do many things. Just like an adventuring party works best when it’s made up of several different classes, your campaign might work best when it has a flexible tone, peppering stories full of darkness and drama with bits of levity and lightness.

As long as what one player wants doesn't encroach on another's hard or soft limits, your goal is simply to make sure moments of one tone don’t spoil moments of another.

House Rules

D&D is a game that's played differently at every table. Part of setting expectations during session 0 is mentioning house rules that players might not be familiar with. It’s important to make those changes clear to everyone upfront so that no one is blindsided when the DM says, "Actually, I have a house rule that says…"

Establishing Hard and Soft Limits

One major safeguard for your campaign’s success is establishing boundaries. Hard and soft limits are a type of safety tool, something that can let you roleplay freely and explore dark, emotionally rich topics without fear of accidentally hurting one of your friends.

Hard limits are lines that absolutely should not be crossed for any reason. Soft limits are topics that are explicitly uncomfortable for a player but should be okay, either as long as the environment feels safe and welcoming or as long as they’re explored lightly or in moderation. Some examples of common limits are:

  • Sexual relations, be it between players or NPCs
  • Violence towards children or animals
  • Racism
  • Slavery
  • Gratuitous violence
  • Drug use
  • Phobia triggers, like spiders or deep water

People will have different limits, and it's important for each player and the DM to know which sensitive topics to be careful with and which to avoid completely. If you or your players aren't comfortable discussing limits openly, you could have an anonymous method of conveying them, like using Discord or index cards.

Drawing the Line

It’s important that your group have a set of safety tools you can use if someone, accidentally or otherwise, crosses these lines. Safety tools make it easier and less intrusive to tell the group, "This is starting to get uncomfortable for me," without the social awkwardness of bringing the whole game to a halt to say so. Hard and soft limits are a great start to using safety tools.

One common and popular safety tool is the X-Card, created by John Stavropolous. This is maybe the most useful RPG safety tool out there. It’s an easy way to "tap out" of a situation. You can use this instead of hard or soft limits, but you can also pair them together to make tapping out easier. If you’re interested in including other safety tools, check out the freely available Tabletop RPG Safety Toolkit, curated by Kienna Shaw and Lauren Bryant-Monk.

Character Creation

Artist: Manuel CastañónTwo students study a piece of parchment covered in ruins.

Character creation is the fun part of session 0. Collaboratively creating your characters and their backstories can provide tons of benefits for a fledgling campaign. You can use this time to make sure your party's composition is right for the type of campaign you'll be playing and establish if you have any connections with your other party members before you start the game.

This is also an excellent time to discuss your player character's place in the campaign setting with the DM. Different campaigns need to cover different topics in session 0, as evidenced by our guide to running a session 0 for Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen. This will give you the time to ensure your idea for your character fits in the game world and you can even begin to discuss potential plotlines for their future.

Showing New Players the Ropes

Every new player’s needs are different. Some new players have never been exposed to fantasy in their lives. Some may have never played D&D before but love Critical Role, The Adventure Zone, Dimension 20, or any number of other actual play D&D shows.

If you’re starting a D&D group with even a single new player in it, it can be greatly beneficial to take the time to help them create their first character with the rest of the group during session 0. D&D is a group activity, and creating a character from scratch can be a great early bonding exercise.

If you’re the DM, you might take it upon yourself to make sure that the new players’ ideas aren’t being talked over by the veteran players. On the other hand, if you feel like a new player isn’t "getting it" or is treating the entire event too jokingly while the more experienced players are ready to get serious (or vice versa), then you can use this time to say so.

What To Do if the Social Contract Is Broken

Ultimately, session 0 is when you form your first impression about a gaming group. You can have a great session 0 that gets you hyped for a campaign and then have promise after promise be broken in the first session or two.

If you find your gaming group has broken your social contract, you’re faced with a decision. You could speak up and let the other players know that what they did broke the rules set in your session 0. Or you can make a quiet exit and look for a different group of people to play D&D with. The decision is yours, just don’t jeopardize your emotional well-being for a D&D group you're unhappy with, even if there are moments of genuine fun sprinkled throughout.

On the other hand, if you like a group of people but for one reason or another you don’t think that a long-term D&D campaign is the right fit, try suggesting another thing to do together. Maybe you have a weekly board game night instead. Or maybe you try a different game. Or you could even set up a D&D one-shot series with a new Dungeon Master every week, round-robin style.

Now, On to Session 1!

Session 0 is the perfect time to set expectations with your gaming group to ensure everyone has a good experience. What's better, it doesn't necessarily have to be held before your first session. If you missed a session 0 in your current campaign and find that there are things you'd like to discuss with your group, it's perfectly viable to hold a session 0 any time between sessions.

D&D is meant to be fun for everyone involved. Making sure everyone is comfortable and their expectations for the game are being met is the first step to ensure a long, successful adventure for everyone!

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James Haeck (@jamesjhaeck) was formerly the lead writer for D&D Beyond. They have contributed to a number of D&D releases, including Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, and Critical Role: Call of the Netherdeep. They are living their best druid life in Seattle, Wash., with a veritable jungle of houseplants.

Mike Bernier contributed to the reporting of this article.

This article was originally published on January 8, 2021, and was updated on March 11, 2024.

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