wish them peace

Drafting the Adventure: Session Zero

It's going to be alright my friend. Session Zero is a more recent "innovation" when it comes to running the game and though it's entered the hobby's common parlance, most of the articles/videos I've seen regarding it generally talk about very basic things like safety systems, having everyone introduce themselves, and scheduling. These things are useful, but they don't give us much structure to work with, and we want to structure our session zero to get as much out of it as possible, both in our prep and at the table.

Also, throughout this post I'm going to mark more advanced techniques with (A), consider these purely optional side additions to experiment with if you think you could be able to pull them off. They're not necessary, but including some of them will help to refine your structure.

First, some hard and fast rules:

Players by and large don't know what they want: Don't ask your players what sort of adventure they'd want to go on, It never goes well and they haven't spent as much time thinking about it as you have. Instead, you want to get them excited about the adventure you want to run: If they've sat down for session zero, they've already agreed to play with you after all, so now's the time for YOU to shine.

No one builds their character in advance: The days of semi-faceless characters showing up at a tavern and then heading out into a generic dungeon to combat randomly generated foes and collect randomly generated treasure is long behind us. We are here to tell epic stories and grow closer with our friends, and that requires everyone to be on vaguely the same page regarding tone/mood/vibe. More on this below in the "At the Table" section.

Everyone comes to session Zero, even if they can’t make the first real session. 

What you need to have Prepped:

I wrote another post about what to do when prepping for campaigns a while back, but to summarize it involves figuring out what the party is going to be DOING for most of the campaign AKA "The Central Gameplay Pillar", which will determine what sort of adventures you'll be sending them on. Mysteries? Warfare? Heists? Monster hunts? Dungeon Delves? Politics? All of these can be the focus of a campaign, and different adventures within that campaign can have different focuses. Still, this central gameplay pillar is what you SELL to your players as exciting. EX: This is a game about high seas adventure, This is a game about being a crew of outlaws exploring desert ruins and doing heists, This is a game of epic heroism, going on quests and winning renown

Once you've figured out the central gameplay pillar, you're likely to have a few ideas for adventures and setting, which is great, but the only thing you need to have in mind when actually pitching the campaign is A) The pilot adventure B) The Big Problem™. The pilot adventure is both a test run for how the rest of the campaign is going to go, and the method by which you introduce the characters to the story and get them working together as an adventuring party. The Big Problem ™ is a cool climatic moment that you’re going to spend the early adventures working toward, think 3-5 levels ahead, not twenty. Look here for how I integrate big problems into my adventure design 

Alternate campaigns (A), its a good idea to start small, to really hammer out one campaign idea and make it shine. When you’re like me however and are a constant fountain of ideas, its always nice to keep a few campaign ideas in backlog especially if some of them are more niche. In this case, you’re still going to have to come up with central gameplay pillars, pilot adventures, and big problems for each game, so ensure each and every one of them is something you’d really like to run. 

What to do once you're at the table:

Let them socialize a bit, let everyone get their distractions out of their system, sit down with food and stuff before you begin your explanation. Maybe break the ice with a quick boardgame if you have some spare time. 

Get them in the headspace for collaborative creation. Explain that this is THEIR campaign as much as much as it is yours, and encourage them to start throwing ideas around. I like to get my party thinking of the upcoming campaign as a TV show that we’re about to spend X weeks watching, and that session zero is our writer’s room. We want the series to be the best that it can be, so we want to lay out some ideas and then build on them before we set anything in stone. 

Explain the campaign premise, the central gameplay pillar, talk about why you're excited about it, what inspired you. Your players are likely to be varying levels of invested about the idea, but seeing how excited YOU are by the concept is likely to get them excited too. Detail just what types of adventures you picture them going on, using examples from pop culture and stories you’ve really liked. (A) if you prepped alternate campaign pitches, now is the time to lay them out. Don’t do this just because you want to give people options though, if people seem interested in one adventure, GO FOR IT. 

Next, lay out the framework for the pilot adventure, what sort of quest they’re going to be going on and a few possible reasons people could be going on it. 

Open the floor to people to pitch characters to the group, not just ones they’d like to play themselves, but would like to see going on this kind of adventure. throw out a few ideas you might’ve had for prospective heroes, then ask anyone if they had any they’d like to toss into the pot. Some people will jump on this, others will be shy and indecisive. Coax these players along with some open questions: Does anybody have any ideas they think would be neat? What roles/archetypes are currently open in the party composition/heist team/ship’s crew? Do they like any particular media that lines up with this idea and are their any characters they identify with from that property? This step will likely not be finalized by the time you end the first session, so use the time between then and the start of the next to do some one on one character building with your party. 

It speaks of how deep their wounds are, if they call the person who supposedly nurtured them and brought them up since they were children by first name, and with no endearing terms. It speaks of a fractured relationship so calcified that nobody even mentions anymore how weird it is.

The idea that two children were brought up in such an emotional waste zone is devastating. They were children, they were scared, they lost everything but each other, and found themselves in the vast empty and cold halls of a huge mansion, left to fend for themselves and for each other while their grandmother who was supposed to care for them subjected them to more abuse, thinking it would make them stronger.

It breaks my heart for adult Lucanis and Illario too. They seem to love each other but are incapable of expressing it in a healthy way and end up trying to destroy each other for the affections of what should be their parental figure but is incapable of filling those shoes and of nurturing them how they'd need. Illario seems incapable to form any meaningful relationship in spite of his adventurous sexual/romantic life, Lucanis is incapable of allowing himself to be loved or to allow himself some of the simplest comforts that were denied to him when he was a child (the wyvern dagger). They live in a constant and self inflicted state of emotional deprivation.

And the worst part is I can totally see Caterina encouraging it, be the one who started it, really. There is no nonna, only Caterina Dellamorte, your house leader. You will find no hugs in her harms, nobody will ask you if you had enough to eat (on the contrary, she starved them), nobody will dry your tears or pat your back.

It breaks my heart but it doesn't surprise that they don't call Caterina nonna, because they never had one, or if they did, she died with their parents.

IPS-N

IPS-N mechs are probably the easiest, since there are many mechs that are close to being 1-to-1 NPC approximations of IPS-N mechs.

Blackbeard - One of the easiest, since the Berserker NPC is basically just a Blackbeard. It has the Chain Axe, it has the reckless speed and it has the inability to properly determine between friend and foe. It doesn't have the Blackbeard's enhanced Grapple shenanigans but those aren't really appropriate on an NPC mech anyway.

Caliban - Give an Assassin the Devil's Cough Shotgun and Explosive Knives.

Drake - Take the Bastion, increase its HP just a little, remove the Rotary Grenade Launcher and give it the Scourer's Thermal Lance, except make the Thermal Lance do Kinetic damage instead of Energy.

Lancaster - Another easy one. The Support NPC is just a slightly slower Lancaster. It has a Latch Drone, it has Restock Drones, it has Whitewash, it's got all the fun stuff.

Nelson - Yet another easy one. The Cataphract does pretty much exactly what the Nelson does, just with added trample.

Raleigh - This is much more difficult - so much so that for In Golden Flame, I created an entirely new NPC class, the Slinger, just to simulate it. If you don't have IGF, start with an Assault. Remove the Assault Rifle, Combat Knife and Hunker Down. Take the Drum Shotgun from the Goliath and call it a Hand Cannon. Give it the Archer's Impending Threat optional.

Tortuga - This one's fairly simple. Take a Sentinel, upscale it to Size 2, give it Punisher Ammunition and the Bombard's Siege Armor.

Vlad - Take a Berserker, give it the Nail Gun optional, and then give it the Bastion's Near-Threat Denial System.

Zheng - Take a Berserker, give it Juggernaut and Retribution, remove Aggression, remove the Chain Axe and replace it with the Demolisher's Demolition Hammer.

SSC

SSC mechs also have a lot of parallels, so it's pretty easy to model them.

Black Witch - Probably the hardest mech to model with existing NPCs. I created another whole new class, the Lodestone, just to simulate these guys.

Death's Head - Take a Sniper, cut the damage on its Anti-Material Rifle to 6/8/10, strip the Loading trait and permanently give it the effect of Deadmetal Rounds (shots become Line 20 instead of Range 25).

Dusk Wing - Literally just a Hornet.

Metalmark - Take an Assault and give it the Operator's Fade Generator.

Monarch - Depending on the exact flavour of Monarch you want, you can do two things. Either take a Rainmaker, scale it up to Size 2 and give it Atlas Missiles the Ace's Missile Swarm, or take an Ace, scale it up to Size 2 and give it Missile Swarm.

Mourning Cloak - Literally just a Specter.

Swallowtail - Literally just a Scout.

HORUS

HORUS mechs are where we need to get a little bit more inventive. This shit ain't natural boys.

Balor - Take a Hive, give it Electro-Nanite Cloud and the Berserker's Harpoon Cannon, then give it the Exotic template and choose Regenerator. Or, if you have No Room For A Wallflower, just use the Lurker NPC.

Goblin - It's a Witch.

Gorgon - Take a Sentinel, scale it up to Size 2 and give it the Archer's Impending Threat and Suppress reactions.

Hydra - There's not really an NPC that simulates a mech deploying 800 drones and honestly that's probably for the best.

Manticore - Give a Berserker the Superhot optional, the Cataphract's Capacitor Discharge, the Sentinel's Combat Shotgun and the Operator's Self-Erasure.

Pegasus - Do not attempt to simulate me, ha ha.

Harrison Armory

Home stretch here.

Barbarossa - Take a Goliath, give it the Ultra's Short-Cycle Lance or the Bombard's Bombard Cannon.

Genghis - Literally just a Pyro.

Iskander - This is just a Seeder.

Napoleon - Why does this mech exist

Saladin - Scale up an Aegis to Size 2.

Sherman - Take a Scourer and give it Emergency Vent.